Singapore shares were little changed by midday, but Southeast Asia's largest telecom firm Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) outperformed the market, rising to a more than two-week high.

By midday, the Straits Times Index (STI) was flat at 2,762.00 points, while MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 1.8 percent.

UOB Kay Hian said the STI was not expensive at a price-earnings ratio (PE) of 12.6 times for fiscal year 2012 - a 24 percent discount to the index's long-term PE mean of 16.6 times since 1993 - but it saw no near-term catalyst as investors remain on the sidelines.

It advised investors to seek shelter in resilient domestic plays such as Singapore Press Holdings and M1 Ltd , as well as stocks with high dividend yields such as Suntec REIT and Cache Logistics Trust.

SingTel shares rose as much as 1 percent to S$3.14, its highest since May 22.

"SingTel's decision to cut data caps for smartphones is a big step toward better data monetisation opportunities for Singapore telcos," Maybank Kim Eng said.

But the broker said the short-term impact will be minimal as the majority of 3G data users do not exceed two gigabytes of data a month and SingTel faces significant risks overseas, particularly on the currency and regulatory fronts.

1336 (0536 GMT) (Reporting by Eveline Danubrata in Singapore; eveline.danubrata@thomsonreuters.com)