In Singapore, the potential onset of competition from the incumbent telco is clearly spurring StarHub Cable Vision to new heights of marketing and content acquisition. As with any industry, we expect competition to drive innovation and creativity. In Hong Kong, Discovery Channel has taken advantage of new market developments to add Animal Planet, Discovery Health, Discovery H&L, Discovery Science and Discovery Travel & Adventure to its offering.
We can expect such offerings to be replicated across a whole range of genres and applications in Asia. Of course, all of this is the result of digitisation and the rollout of broadband services, increasingly a key driver for growth. In Asia, there are about 20 million broadband households, including three million in China, six million in Japan, six million in Korea, 2.2 million in Taiwan and 500,000 in Hong Kong. This is already greater than the size of the US market and is anticipated to grow to exceed 50 million households by 2007.
This new shelf space is also driving the development of local content.
Just in the area of news, in India, for instance, there were six 24-hours news channels launched in the last few months; Hong Kong should soon be moving from one 24-hour news channel to three within three months; in Taiwan there are now eight news channels, Singapore has ChannelNewsAsia and the Philippines has its own round-the-clock service. In terms of sports offerings, soccer rights are being snapped up all over Asia either by regional players or local operators.
Inevitably, competition increases the value for the consumer and even the threat of competition can have that effect. Look at the telecom industry.
In Hong Kong, fixed line supplier PCCW, for example, is endeavoring to retain customer loyalty by introducing a new fixed-line SMS service. Elsewhere, in markets such as Japan, tensions between cable and satellite platforms are another driver for market penetration.
Of course, as importantly as anything, competition needs to be kept in sync by an even-handed regulator. And, as our industry matures, it is becoming ever more important that our regulators understand market dynamics and the full implications of some of their decisions. Even regulators have to compete sometimes. Even they need to retain market share and that's why it's so important that our regulators from India to Japan or China down to New Zealand need to be better educated on the nuances of tangling with the intricate wiring of the cable, satellite, broadband and telecom industries. If they get it wrong, they will strangle the lot of us.