SingTel toady announced the commercial launch of the Mobile Prestige 75 (S$69.90 per mth), the first LTE service in Singapore for both consumer and business customers.
Eventually, coverage will grow to 80% of mobile data users by end 2012 and 95% by 2013.
Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) today announced the commercial launch of its 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) BroadBand on Mobile (BBoM) service.
Fast speed
Bandwidth consumption profile
Yuen Kuan Moon, SingTel EVP of Digital Consumer said that SingTel does not offer any unlimited data plans, although the 50GB limit is more than enough for most consumers.
He revealed that 89% of SingTel’s subscriber base consume less than 10GB per mth, 10% consume 10 to 50 GB, while only 1% consume more than 50%.
This effectively means that 11% of subscribers consume 60% of data traffic.
The service offers theoretical download speeds of up to 75Mbps and typical download speeds between 3.4Mbps and 12Mbps.
It provides mobile Internet access that is more than three times faster than existing 3G-based services, with only one-fifth of the network latency.
SingTel 4G LTE will enable many bandwidth-intensive applications, such as cloud storage, music/video/HDTV streaming, video conferencing, online gaming, mobile data networking, rich voice etc.
SingTel’s BBoM Prestige 75 LTE will provide performances and services approaching that of fixed line networks. For instance, it will take only 2 min 14s to stream a 3.5 min-long snippet of video from YouTube.
Coverage evolution
At launch, the service provides outdoor coverage in the central financial district and other areas that experience high data usage.
At launch, SingTel BBoM Prestige 75 will cover the CBD and more than 100 sites.
This includes Shenton Way, Orchard, City Hall, Marina Bay, River Valley, Tanglin, Newton, Novena, Kallang, Rochor, Outram, Tanjong Pagar, Jurong West, Boon Lay, Bukit Panjang, Bedok and Changi.
In-building coverage is available in major shopping malls such as Ngee Ann City, Plaza Singapura, Ang Mo Kio Hub, Tampines Mall, West Mall, Parkway Parade and Jurong IMM. Office buildings such as Republic Plaza and Temasek Tower are also covered.
The service falls back to SingTel’s 3G-based Premium 21 service when users roam outside the LTE coverage area.
USB dongle
Mr Yuen said that SingTel is progressively expanding its network, which is expected to be able to provide LTE coverage for 80 per cent of mobile data users by the end of 2012.
By 2013, coverage will be extended to 95 per cent.
BBoM plans
Broadband on Mobile Prestige 75 will initially be available for USB dongle modems only.
Support for LTE-enabled smartphones and tablets will only be available when these mobile devices become more readily available in the market later on in 2012.
Existing 21Mbps 3G Broadband on Mobile Premium 21 customers can upgrade to LTE with a top-up of $10 per month.
The price plans for SingTel’s various mobile broadband plans can be found here.
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