Supporting Digital Lifestyles
Our sustained investment and innovation have brought our consumers the most advanced connectivity and digital services in the market, empowering them to fully embrace a connected lifestyle.
We have strengthened our standing as Singapore’s service provider of choice, delivering 18% growth in our full-year earnings to S$331 million, before interest and taxes.
Leading in 5G
We established Singapore as a global pioneer when we completed the rollout of our nationwide standalone 5G network in July 2022, paving the way for exciting new consumer experiences and growth. Since then, we have continued to strengthen our 5G coverage to cover more than 1,600 outdoor locations and 600 buildings, including underground train lines, as at the end of March 2023.
Our network superiority has been recognised broadly by industry experts. Ookla, a global leader in network intelligence and connectivity insights, has recognised Singtel for having the fastest 5G mobile network in Singapore in its annual speed test, for the third year in a row. Opensignal, an independent global standard for mobile networks, also recognised Singtel as having the fastest 5G download speeds in South-East Asia and Oceania.
To make 5G relevant to consumers, we brought 5G’s highspeed and low latency to life through use cases such as Singapore’s first fully mobile live-streamed outdoor event in Sentosa – the Singapore Motocross Beach Race. We deployed network slicing at the 2022 Formula One Grand Prix Season in Singapore, where our customers caught the seamless coverage of the race on the Singtel CAST video app, despite being in a high-density zone with more than 250,000 spectators.
These developments have contributed to a 70% increase in our 5G base from a year ago and we expect further growth as 5G applications become more pervasive.
Enhancing our roaming services
The re-opening of borders drove demand for roaming services, which is a very important part of our business in Consumer. Outbound traveller volumes have recovered to more than 75% of pre-COVID levels as at end of March 2023 and we anticipate further increase in the months ahead as China progressively re-opens its borders.
Ahead of the re-opening, we enhanced our ReadyRoam plans to offer larger data bundles and longer validity periods, and expanded our 5G roaming network to cover over 55 destinations worldwide. These initiatives have allowed us to capitalise on the rebound in international travel and roaming.
Raising the bar on customer experience
We made significant investments to improve the customer experience and strengthen trust. For example, we implemented network quality monitoring and remote router rebooting during inactive periods to prevent WiFi performance degradation, successfully reducing call-ins for assistance by 36%.
Our Smart Network initiative has provided our customers with greater control, protection and connectivity. Customers are now able to check the WiFi signal strength in various parts of their home, upgrade their home internet equipment for better performance, sign up for cyber security services, or subscribe to a connectivity boost to level up their gaming experience, directly from the MySingtel App.
We’ve expanded our digital service offerings for consumers and made them easier to access. Through CAST.SG, customers can purchase and activate all of our video content, lifestyle and hardware offerings via a single app.
To provide our customers with better access to digital banking services, we integrated Dash with the Grab-Singtel digibank, GXS. Singtel customers are able to sign up for a GXS bank account and check their balance directly from our Singtel Dash app. GXS customers are also able to make QR payments at Dash merchants.
Our rewards programmes have been further enhanced, to offer more value to our loyal consumers. We are the exclusive telco partner of yuu Rewards Club, which allows members to accumulate and enjoy rewards points at over 1,000 partner stores in Singapore. This complements our Red rewards programme, which offers our customers more value on roaming, data, devices, entertainment on CAST, lifestyle indulgences with partner merchants, and priority services such as four-hour home site support.
The success of these efforts is reflected in our consistent best-in-industry Net Promoter Score, which improved by 5.25 points year-on-year to 22.75.
Building a better future for all
Keeping our customers safe is our utmost priority, especially as scams and cyber security threats grow in sophistication and pervasiveness. We proactively block over 30 million scam calls and 20 million scam messages monthly and are continually exploring new ways to help customers combat this relentless threat. Earlier this year, we rolled out Broadband Protect, a new feature embedded within our network which identifies and blocks malicious websites on any smart device connected to a customer’s WiFi network using advanced technologies like AI.
We also made strides in our environmental and community efforts. Our Donate Your Data programme saw 30,000 GOMO customers donate over 1,000 terabytes of mobile data to seniors, helping them stay connected with their loved ones. We also deployed Singapore’s greenest 5G radio cell together with Ericsson, which is 58% more energy efficient than 4G. This, to our knowledge is the most energy-efficient network in Singapore. In addition, to further reduce our carbon footprint, we collected more than 5,100kg of e-waste for recycling.
Forging ahead
The local telco sector remains highly competitive, while facing persistent inflationary pressures.
We will build on our superior network and differentiated services, and leverage new technologies such as generative AI, to provide exceptional customer experiences. We will also invest in unique business-to-business-to-any end-user (B2B2X) partnerships to build multiple levers for growth in Singapore and the region, within and beyond telco – from digital finance, insurance, entertainment, to travel and more. The strategic consolidation of our consumer and enterprise units will also unlock synergies and enable us to bring compelling solutions to market in a faster, agile way.
