section_path: Culture/Media
section_name: Media
paragraph_text: Media
  
  Companies linked to the government control much of the domestic media in Singapore. MediaCorp operates most free-to-air television channels and free-to-air radio stations in Singapore. There are a total of six free-to-air TV channels offered by MediaCorp. StarHub TV and Singtel TV also offer IPTV with channels from all around the world. SPH Media Trust, a body with close links to the government, controls most of the newspaper industry in Singapore.
  
  Singapore's media industry has sometimes been criticised for being overly regulated and lacking in freedom by human rights groups such as Freedom House. Self-censorship among journalists is said to be common. In 2023, Singapore was ranked 129 on the Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders, up from 139 the previous year. The Media Development Authority regulates Singaporean media, claiming to balance the demand for choice and protection against offensive and harmful material. Private ownership of TV satellite dishes is banned.
  
  Internet in Singapore is provided by state-owned Singtel, partially state-owned Starhub and M1 Limited as well as some other business internet service providers (ISPs) that offer residential service plans of speeds up to 2 Gbit/s as of spring 2015. Equinix (332 participants) and the Singapore Internet Exchange (70 participants) are Internet exchange points where Internet service providers and Content delivery networks exchange Internet traffic between their networks (autonomous systems) in various locations in Singapore. In the mid-1980s to 1990s, Singaporeans could also use the locally based videotext service Singapore Teleview to communicate with one another. The phrase Intelligent Island arose in the 1990s in reference to the island nation's early adaptive relationship with the internet.
  
  In 2016, there were an estimated 4.7 million internet users in Singapore, representing 82.5% of the population. The Singapore government does not engage in widespread censoring of the internet, but it maintains a list of one hundred websites—mostly pornographic—that it blocks from home internet access as a "symbolic statement of the Singaporean community's stand on harmful and undesirable content on the Internet". Singapore has the world's highest smartphone penetration rates, in surveys by Deloitte and the Google Consumer Barometer—at 89% and 85% of the population respectively in 2014. The overall mobile phone penetration rate is at 148 mobile phone subscribers per 100 people.