Four telcos too many for Singaporeans

About 58% felt that there are too many brands to choose from.

Singapore’s telecom scene now boasts 12 mobile brands with the launch of full-service carrier TPG earlier this year and a host of virtual brands to boot. So just which brands are coming to dominate and what are consumers to make of all the choices?

A recent Maybank Kim Eng survey of consumers found that 58% of Singaporeans believe there are too many brands to choose from. But choose they must, although 60% of respondents prefer to stick to one SIM the others are trying out the new offerings.

For the other 40% who are taking on a second contract, Circles.Life is the main new brand respondents would want to try along with TPG and unlisted MyRepublic. In some bad news for the virtual brands, the entry of TPG has seen more consumers wanting to try it at the expense of established virtual brands of Circles and MyRepublic which have come off to 24.4% and 12.7%, respectively, from 29.6% and 15.6% previously.

Maybank King Eng analyst Luis Hilado points out that the proliferation of brands has likely driven multi-SIM usage as subscribers use spare/extra devices to accommodate a new SIM, but that doesn’t mean that they are willing to give up their main number. The survey shows that 88.3% of respondents have held on to their primary number for more than 24 months against 80.8% in the previous survey.

As yet a big unknown is how the entry of 5G will affect the market, especially as Apple has yet to launch a 5G model. Yet one thing the survey did show is that only one in four consumers are willing to pay a higher tariff for higher speeds, which gives little incentive for Singapore’s carriers to rush their rollouts.