Singapore Mobile operators go for Tiered pricing. Both SingTel & StarHub slashes data volume by greater than 90%

Source: CNA

Good news to Telco's & Employees/Engineers working there. But bad news to end users.

Yesterday SingTel announced the new plans for LTE and at the same time announced that they would be reducing the 12 GB limit to 2GB. Within minutes StarHub followed suite and in a more aggressive manner they slashed to 1GB.

This means all you can do with the mobile price plan on SH is watching around 8 hours of Youtube (My observation here) in a month or 40 min / work day of youtube.

No more downloads/videos/streaming on mobile. Ok, no more complaining and as a consumer, now I want few things from SingTel/StarHub.

1. Reduce the prices 


Based on SingTel price plans, a basic plan with 100 min voice min is priced at $25.68/month
at the same time based on current plans the 12GB data with 100 min is priced at $39.90/month
So the current charges are estimated as ~ $14/month for 12 GB.

Now I don't expect them to charge based on the same but based on SingTel pricing itself they intend to charge $5.35/GB. If I apply the same principle, then we shouldn't be paying $14 but $10.70. But I am not optimistic as the market is kind of fixed in Singapore and without real competition all the operators simply price in the same ranges.

2. Improve Coverage, Speeds

I'm sure majority of the people have noticed that lately the mobile coverage/speed in Singapore sucks. I travel quite frequently in the region so I carry the local SIM cards. To my surprise even the developing nations (India, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia) offers much better voice clarity & data speed compared to Singapore. In Australia Optus offers $2 / day package where you can enjoy unlimited voice/data/sms by simply paying $2 a day (info here).

By the way, recently Google study made it official that Singapore offers one of the slowest mobile speeds among developed nations. Now Operators can't give an excuse that they can't go on expanding spree forever because users are using data without paying for.

3. Service


Not really related to tiered pricing or buffet pricing but in general I believe this is high time that Operators need to improve on service levels and treat customers as 'humans'. When we try to reach out to technical support it is common to wait a min of 20-30 min in Q listening to a boring music. The same operator can reach us any time and blast SMS advertisements at middle of night.

IDA as regulator should come in here and stipulate certain SLA/SLG. Not the typical 'paper' SLA but real experience.

In summary I don't mind paying if I am getting the quality, reliability & service.

SingTel 2G/3G BBOM or Data Network down..II

Well its just 48 hours and need to write a new post :|

The BBOM is not working again since morning in City area. Change to Internet works like a charm though a bit slow..

These days it is getting very common and I don't want to blame them solely. Competition is driving prices down and operators are squeezing vendors in return. The entire value chain is in a 'price war' and there is no such thing as "cheaper, better, faster" :). So if we want quality then we should be ready to pay for it and given the current market situation I don't think this is going to happen any time soon.. Sad to say but this is the reality today in Singapore (Be it Telco or ISP or any other)

SingTel 2G/3G BBOM or Data Network down..

I was in the office yesterday and seems SingTel Mobile BBOM was down again.. @ Tanjong Pagar to Suntec (CBD area) I couldn't connect.

This morning there was a slight problem but so far seems the problem resolved quite fast.

However right now (@1500 Hrs) I could connect to 3G + Data network but I can't browse any sites. I tried resetting the network settings & turn on/off the phone but still the same problem.

There was a old trick I remembered since Magix days. change the proxy.. So I did changed the APN settings and it started working :).. So e-ideas to internet on my iPhone resolved the problem. Though it did disabled my Personal Host Spot (reason here) it worked well.

Past links:

1.  Outage in Jan 2012

2. Outage in Sep 2011

Prepaid mobile data plan in Singapore

Ok, I never had to look for internet connectivity in Singapore as I'm carrying multiple devices with internet connectivity. But after my recent trips to US,AU,EU&IN I started to wonder what are the options for travelers or casual data users in Singapore
It turns out be that the options are pretty limited :(

Below is a table & url's comparing the options available. As you can see perhaps SH offers somewhat better plan. SingTel totally sucks here and may be they are happy with their postpaid and doesn't mind loosing few $ to competitors in prepaid data segment.

http://info.singtel.com/personal/communication/internet/broadband-on-the-go/broadband-on-mobile
http://www.starhub.com/mobile/mobilevalueaddedservices/maxmobile/maxmobileplanstable.html
http://goo.gl/LAhXB

Some comments based on my own experience is,

* SingTel is the incumbent and largest operator with good coverage and stable speeds
* SH is 2nd largest and acceptable coverage + speeds
* M1 speeds are good in specific areas but I've quite a bad experience with their mobile network. They are the only one to offer LTE in Singapore right now but that's not available for prepaid yet.

Having said that the SH & M1 may surprise you depending on the area and time of the day. So I'd think the best option is still to go with the 'cost'. If you need to have a voice plan together then all three operators offers similar plans. i.e. bundled prepaid voice + data.

BSNL DSL, Reliance Netconnect, Bharti EDGE

Perhaps this is the first time I need to use internet extensively in India. We've BSNL DSL (One Net) connection at home but having experienced problems with it I wanted to have another option and I am inclined to get a mobile connection. With mobile I don't have to worry about power outages and landline issues.

Finally I opted for Bharti due to the price and positive feedback. Charges are acceptable and speed is much better than what I expected. I even made some skype calls over it and quality is same or much better than our world class infrastructure in Singapore. Throughout is consistent around 120 Kbps which is enough for skype.. The charges are R5 for 50MB /Day. Few more options are available like R98 for 2GB/Month etc..