This is the first post in my Singapore Mobile Plans series. Future posts will go deeper into the best regional data bundles, travel SIM strategy, and best AI-bundled plans.
Singapore’s mobile plan landscape has changed more in the last decade than in the two before it. This post is my attempt to make sense of where we are now — and more practically, which plans I think offer the best value mobile plan in Singapore at the moment, based on my own experience managing multiple lines for myself and my family.
How We Got Here: The Evolution of Mobile Plans in Singapore
The contract era. For a long time, signing a 2-year contract was just how mobile plans worked. Most people signed not because the plan itself was great, but because it came with a subsidised phone. The plans themselves were expensive, light on data — as good as zero when we first started, in an era where ICQ and MSN Messenger ruled and WhatsApp hadn’t been invented yet — and heavy on call minutes and SMS, because that was all that mattered back then.
The SIM-only and MVNO era. The shift started around 2016, when Circles.life launched as Singapore’s first fully digital telco, followed by others like MyRepublic, Gomo, and Simba. These Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) lease network infrastructure from the three main telcos — Singtel, M1, and StarHub — and pass the savings on to consumers. Plans suddenly became affordable, starting from as little as $10 a month for a genuinely usable data bundle. Smartphones had also gotten expensive enough that the old subsidy math stopped making sense, and people started buying phones outright.
The unlimited data era. Around 2019 to 2022, operators competed aggressively on unlimited local data. This was when “unlimited data” briefly became the headline selling point — before most people realised they were already nowhere near their data caps on a typical day anyway.
The regional bundling era. More recently, the differentiator has shifted to roaming. Plans now routinely bundle Malaysia data, APAC roaming, and even worldwide allowances as standard. For a Singapore-Malaysia corridor that sees tens of thousands of crossings a day, this is a genuinely useful shift.
The AI bundling era (emerging). The newest wave is AI subscriptions bundled into mobile plans. Circles.life now bundles free access to six AI models — including OpenAI’s GPT-5.4, Google Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude — into its plans, and giga has followed with its own gigaAI bundle. Expect more operators to follow as AI tools become a real consumer differentiator.