It was recently put forward by Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., the largest telephone company in Southeast Asia, that in the April-June period, its profit rose 7.7 percent; the credit of which goes to growing subscriber base, which enhanced the income.

Via a statement on Thursday, the company, also called SingTel, specified that its net income for the fiscal first quarter hiked to 945 million Singapore dollars ($654 million), up from SG$878 million a year earlier.

According to Chief Executive Chua Sock Koong, it is a challenge to deal with the current operating environment. SingTel said that since its global subscriber base jumped by a third to 262 million, its income gained 1.9 percent to SG$3.85 billion.

It should be noted that more than half of the company's profits are accounted by SingTel's stakes in operators in Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Chua concluded: "If we look at the economic numbers that have been announced across the region, we're probably quite comfortable that the worst is over. But we see that the growth across sectors in the economy is actually still uneven."