Starhub has been facing declining profitability in the last few years. It even had to cut its 20-cent annual dividend last year, a dividend which it had held steady for 7 years. Why did Starhub face declining profitability and who moved Starhub's cheese? To discuss these questions, we need to first understand what were Starhub's competitive advantages in the past and how have they changed.

Traditionally, compared to its 2 rivals, Starhub has the advantage of using its cable network infrastructure to deliver both cable TV and cable broadband services, thus enabling it to spread out the cost of operating the infrastructure over a larger number of customers.

In addition, compared to M1, which until recent years only offered mobile services, Starhub (and also Singtel) has the hubbing strategy which offers customers discounts if they sign up for 3 services, namely, mobile line, home broadband and Pay TV. ...