I was scrolling the other day when saw that my telco came up with a ridiculous promotion.
For just $18 a month, you get 400GB of data, 12GB of roaming data, unlimited call time, and more. This is 10 times more data than I’ll ever use, and cheaper!
How is this possible? 10 years ago, I was paying $20 for 3GB of slow data.
I compared price with other countries.
- Australia — $58 ($70AUD)/mth for 50GB
- New Zealand — $30 ($40NZD)/mth for 5GB
So how did Singapore become so cheap?
My first thought was that Singapore is small, lower infrastructure cost.
But how about Hong Kong?
$14 ($88HKD) per month for 32GB, still much higher than Singapore.
It turns out the answer lies in strategy.
Instead of leaving it to capitalism, focusing on returns, Singapore treat data as a necessity (like water and healthcare) and made it a public good, with a twist.
The telcos remain private companies. However, they “rent” internet from a single company, NetLink Trust.
This government-linked company built and maintains all the internet infrastructure. Prices and quality are standardised and heavily regulated.
This approach eliminates duplicated infrastructure, speeds up deployment, and profits become secondary to the public good.
Meanwhile, private companies does customer-facing parts, driving innovation and reducing costs. Ultimately, benefiting the consumer.
Like most things, it started out expensive. Slowly, benefits compounds. Then, overnight, the cheapest and fastest internet in the world.
Learn the game, pick a strategy, change your habits.
Change your life.
