Nokia, Sun, Intel, HP and IBM are among tech firms calling off regional conferences and their executives are now also banned from unnecessary travel.
In place of physical meetings, such multinationals are now turning to phone and video conferencing.
"Ad-hoc requests for our audio conference services have gone up by 20 per cent compared to the average before the Iraq war and SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) crisis," said Adrienne Tho, a spokeswoman from Singapore Telecommunications, the republic's largest telco.
"There has also been a 50 percent increase in the usage of our two Singapore video conference studio facilities," she added.
Rival telco StarHub is also seeing a similar boom. "There was a 50 percent increase in subscription and usage of our audio conferencing services in March," said StarHub spokeswoman Cassie Fong.
Both companies also pointed to an increase in SMS (Short Message Service) traffic following the outbreak of war in the Middle-East and the pneumonia-like flu in Asia.
These trends hardly come of any surprise with Asian air travel sorely affected by travel advisories issued by Western governments and just plain fear sweeping the region.
Such worries have in turn have triggered a downturn in various sectors in Singapore, with tourism-related industries being the hardest hit. According to latest figures released by the Singapore Tourism Board, tourist arrivals fell 14.8 percent in March compared to the same period last year.
The situation is set to get worse as regional tradeshows and conferences geared for Singapore continue to get scrapped or relocated.
Information Security World Asia 2003, a regional gathering of security players showcasing wares, was to take place in the island-state later this month but the event will be postponed indefinitely.
Two other tech shows scheduled alongside the event--CardsAsia 2003 and Disaster Recovery 2003--have also been canned.
Meanwhile, the fate remains undecided for CommunicAsia 2003, one of Singapore's largest IT tradeshows. Singapore Exhibition Services, the organizer of this multi-million dollar tradeshow to be held in June, said it will monitor SARS developments closely before making a call.
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