Not a Time for Cold-Calling Pick and choose your telecom choices carefully Stock markets around the world are valuing telecommunications companies as some of the hottest prospects of the New Economy. Asia is no exception, as the run-up in stock prices of companies from China Telecom to Japan's NTT DoCoMo to Korea's SK Telecom demonstrates. But Thio Boon Kiat, portfolio manager for the United Telecom Fund of UOB Asset Management in Singapore, an arm of United Overseas Bank, warns that investors shouldn't be blinded. We are seeing a convergence of what used to be three different segments - voice, data and video.
Sure valuations are a concern, but there are still a lot of opportunities.
If you view things in a static way, current valuations might seem unjustified. But this industry is changing so rapidly that valuations are a moving target. We like the wireless data segment. What's happened to NTT DoCoMo and its i-mode mobile data service is a case in point. It took i-mode six months to get 1 million subscribers, another three to get the next million, two to get the third million and one month to get the fourth million.