Singtel has made further efforts to diversify beyond its core telecoms business with the announcement of a partnership with Hyundai Motor Company that will see the pair work together on new 5G-based Internet of Things (IoT) solutions and more.

According to a joint statement, Singtel and Hyundai said they intend to collaborate on a range of ventures to support smart manufacturing and connectivity for electric vehicle batteries.

The duo also referenced Hyundai Motor Group's announcement last year that it is setting up a new innovation center in Singapore.

Figure 1: Shake on it: Singtel's Andrew Lim and Hyundai's Hong Bum Jung take the obligatory group MoU shot.
(Source: Hyundai)

The Singapore-based operator has been increasingly focusing on new growth areas, and intends to exploit 5G capabilities to develop new enterprise applications alongside its consumer offerings.

Indeed, the partnership with Hyundai aims to enable this co-creation of enterprise services. For example, the companies plan to pool their respective expertise in automotive and manufacturing and 5G and IoT to improve how vehicles are currently manufactured.

They also said they intend to work together on an IoT communications solution for the batteries that provide the power for Hyundai's electric vehicles in Singapore.

Enterprise focus

Singtel, which, aside from Singapore, owns operators in Southeast Asia, Australia and India, has just emerged from a somewhat bruising 2020 because of the effects of COVID-19.

The operator has been exploring new opportunities to provide a firmer basis for growth, with a strong focus on enterprise.

Indeed, at the end of 2020, it established a new portfolio under its group enterprise division that is dedicated to driving its 5G enterprise business across the region.

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At the time, new Group CEO Yuen Kuan Moon insisted that 5G "is going to be more than just a connectivity play for us and this refocus of the business will allow us to go after the digital growth that 5G will fuel as a plethora of use cases and business models emerge."

Singtel also plans to derive more value from its ICT arm, NCS, with plans to expand beyond Singapore and become a "leading regional B2B digital services company."

The operator has also recently partnered with both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in the field of edge computing services based on 5G technology. Here, too, Singtel intends to focus on the co-creation of enterprise services with particular support for hybrid cloud offerings.

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— Anne Morris, contributing editor, special to Light Reading