After years of being spammed by irritating SMSes to buy a house or insurance policy, Singapore consumers will finally be able to say no to these messages with a data protection law passed for the first time yesterday.

They can add their names to a national Do-No-Call list, up by early 2014, which will tell telemarketers not to send marketing SMSes or call them to peddle bank loans and the like.  …

Often a tolerant lot, Singaporeans can accept a lot of things – slow broadband speeds, lack of full number portability (until last year) and even not being able to choose their government (in some wards).

But one thing they can’t stand, joked a journalist pal of mine, is to have their weekend football fix taken away. Should that happen, he declared, there’d be a “RIOOOOT!”

That perhaps explains why the Singapore media authorities did a stunning U-turn yesterday, saying that they might just  make SingTel share its fresh-in-the-bag Barclays Premier League rights with StarHub come next year.

Acting Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts Lui Tuck Yew, even went so far as to say the government was considering an universal pay-TV set-top box for Singapore homes, so that people don’t have to get two set-top boxes to watch BPL on SingTel and other popular channels that StarHub carries. …