redONE Singapore Plan Impressions and Comparison

“Amazing” Plans. Sure.

NOTE: This impressions article is accurate as of 1 July 2019. As the Singapore telco market is constantly changing, details may no longer be accurate by the time you read this. Still, I’ll try my best to edit this and ensure this is up to date.

redONE, a MVNO mobile carrier in Malaysia, has finally launched their services in Singapore after many months of waiting. Like their Malaysia network, they are a MVNO piggybacking of Starhub’s network and have a trio of “Amazing” termed postpaid plans.

From a quick glance, their amazing plan has 4 big, appealing features:

COST

Prior to redONE, cheap plan in Singapore that were readily available such as Zero1’s $13.90 or Circles.life free flexi plan only came with 1GB of fast speed data and less minutes. Amazing8 costs $8 a month and comes with 2GB of fast speed data + 150 minutes.

Free Malaysia Data Roaming

All their plans come with the ability to use up local data abroad in malaysia with no extra charges.

Local Rates for Malaysia Numbers

While in Singapore, users can use their local minutes and text allocation quota to communicate to malaysia with no extra fees. Going over the allocation will also charge users at local rates. However, this is not vice versa. Calls or texts made in malaysia you will be charged at 50c per minute or per text.

Unlimited talktime within their network

with a fair usage policy of at least a 1,000 minutes before they start looking into you.So far, redONE has quite unique benefits, let’s look through their trio of plans.

Amazing8 costs 8 dollars and provides 3GB of fast speed data, 100 minutes of normal voice calls and 10 outgoing SMS.

Amazing18 costs 18 dollars and tops the data quota to 6GB, voice to 200 and SMSes to 20.

Amazing28 costs 28 dollars and tops the data quota to 10GB, voice to 300 and SMSes to 30.

EDIT: Amazing8 and Amazing18 has their data boosted from 2 to 3GB and 5 to 6GB respectively as of July 2019. The minutes for all plans has also been reduced by 50 minutes.

All of them come with free incoming calls, texts while within singapore.

Caller ID on all plans are currently “free till further notice”.

I wished that the data quota was bumped up more as it goes up, but I am appalled at the paltry amount of SMSes with each price jump.

Unlimited Basic Internet

Going over the data quota on all plans will drop you into Unlimited Basic Internet which is simply Internet throttled at 128kbps. There is no mention if this applies to both download and upload, so no knowing if uploads will be throttled more heavily. This will probably be just enough for the most basic text chat and nothing more.

Other Extra Packages

DATA

redONE likely wants you to spring for the Data Add-ons packages costing $5 for 1GB, $15 for 5GB and $25 for 10GB instead. As far as extra data packages go, these are expensive for heavy usage, but for occasional top-ups these are fine.

redONE also has a special data package for selected apps called redSOCIAL and redSOCIAL. Costing $18 per month for redSOCIAL, this package will grant 20GB of data strictly for use of Facebook, Skype, Whatsapp and Youtube. You can also spring for redSOCIAL Lite which provides 10GB of data for the above apps for $10 a month.The package bundled apps seems lacking with apps such as Instagram, Wechat, Music streaming apps and others missing.

Additionally, the data can only be used locally in Singapore.

Depending on the base plan and how heavy you use such apps, this package might be worth subscribing to, but it is not groundbreaking by any means due to the limited app lineup. You can get unlimited data plans on Starhub and Circles for $20 bucks.

Calls and Texts

Going over on the allocated minutes will cost 10¢ a minute which is a fantastic price as most other postpaid carriers charge roughly 16¢ a minute while prepaid charges 16¢ for peak and 8¢ for non-peak.

Caller ID masking is a cheap $2 a month.

Going over SMS will cost 5¢ a text which is market rate.

The… odd registration process and some catches.

Registration (of which one-time fees of $40 are waived) and account management for redONE is quite…unique. There is no ability to sign up for the plans through the website unlike all other MVNOs in Singapore, instead users will have to physically go to “partnered” shops to register for the plans. There is no indication if or when a online registration system will be put in place.

At these shops, redONE allows users to pay for their bills. Thankfully, one can still use their mobile app to manage and pay bills after registering at these shops.

It seems that redONE has opted for such to reduce costs of shipping individual sim cards to customers.

It will certainly deter some from getting the sim card, but at least they have a least 1 partnered shop on each corner of singapore.

redONE has a minimum contract period of 2 months. If the contract is terminated before then, one is required to pay the remaining months.

Inaccurate Data Measurement

redONE measures data in 1MB blocks instead of typical carriers who do 100,10,1KB blocks. This means that even if you phone does a small blip of a few bites to check with the internet, it will be registered as 1MB of data consumed.

This will no doubt cause extremely high data usage and is questionable on how ethical it is.

Competitiveness

The competitiveness and appeal of redONE does depends on which plan we are focusing on.

Amazing8

Comparison Chart

Amazing8 is appealing just based on one factor alone: Price. As such, for light users, this is a great plan. For $8, you get a decent amount of data and minutes and the bonus features such as the ability to data roam in malaysia just seems like icing on the cake. I am even willing to dismiss the small amount of SMSes due to prevalence of whatsapp.

Zero1 13.90 plan is a close competitor that provides usable unlimited data and more texts, but it does cost 75% more and has less fast speed data (1GB vs 3GB.) Additionally, there is no data roaming but texts do at least come through while overseas.

Circles Life Flexi plan is infinitely cheaper at free, but has two times less data, no free incoming calls, and 30 minutes of calls. Additionally, there is no roaming of any sort and data boosts are more expensive. The registration fee is currently a steep $50 dollars that can cover half a year of Amazing8.

This plan also creams any long-term prepaid plan if data is being used due to the high costs of prepaid data relative to the new postpaid options. The only advantage that prepaid has is IDD rates are cheaper then redONE outside of malaysia.

None of these plans are clear winners, instead they each provide a good option for different light use cases.

Amazing18

redONE’s Amazing18 faces a lot more competition due to all other competitors having tons of rebates and promotional offers during this period.

Additionally, it is very disappointing that the text allocation is bumped from 10 to 20. Comeon, give us at least a healthy 100 or so. It’s at least nice to have even if not used.

For users who rarely or don’t use any of the roaming features and can live within 200 or so minutes, they will be better served by Starhub $25 Sim Only ($20 a month with online rebate), Gomo, or Circles.Life (with current port in rebate) due to them having 10GB or more data.

For people who go back and forth Malaysia often , the data roaming is still useful and as such Amazing18 still can stand out.

EDIT: M1 has discontinued their mySIM plans in favour of their OnePlans which start at $25. They come with a lot more data, but at this point it competes more with Amazing28.

EDIT 2: redONE now has 6GB of data instead of 5GB. My opinions don’t change much though.

Amazing28

M1 Data Passport

EDIT: M1 has discontinued their mySIM plans in favour of their OnePlans which start at $25. As such, adding data roaming to their plan will start at $35 instead of $30 of which 10GB can be used overseas. At that price, it’s a lot harder to compete with Amazing28.

redOne’s Amazing28 brings in direct competition from M1 with their Data Passport feature.

For 30 dollars a month, M1 provides 15GB of data, 5GB of which can be used in Malaysia and Singapore. Locally, M1 gives 100SMS and 100 minutes as well (though you can get 800 minutes monthly with porting in for a year) that can be used only for singapore numbers. Additionally, the contract lasts for a year.

redONE on the other hand costs 28 dollars a month for 10GB of data, 1.5GB of which can only be used in malaysia and singapore. Locally, redONE gives 30SMS (ugh) and 350 minutes which can be used for both singapore and malaysia numbers.

At this price point and taking in account that you are a user who goes to malaysia often, it is really how much you value the ability to call and text malaysia, contracts, and the data usable in Malaysia.

Giga’s Plan

Non-frequent travellers or locals who stick to Singapore at this price point should just go for another network. Giga for example utilizes the same network, but provides 1000 SMSes, 1000 Minutes, Free incoming, 25GB of data for $25 dollars. If you don’t need the insane amount of minutes and SMSses, there are plenty other options as well which will beat RedONE.

Conclusion

Carriers in Singapore

In the crowded mobile market that Singapore is currently in, another MVNO coming to play does seem like one too many. With that, redONE does bring unique features and will appeal to a certain niche of people such as frequent travellers into Malaysia and value hunters.

However, this comparison does not take in account Malaysia prepaid cards. If you do have a dual-sim phone (or heck even if you don’t), you might just want to consider getting a Malaysia prepaid card and stick to a different Singapore plan. They are cheap and more flexible as well.

This does come at the inconvenience of picking up, managing, and swapping sim cards, but for some it might be worth it.

Lastly, redONE’s plans unique features such as calls and texts to Malaysia at local rates are welcome, but a kind reminder that chat services such as WhatsApp exists.