A large number of people, especially younger people are spending many hours daily online on various media websites. They are also using messaging and other similar websites regularly. Typically most telecom companies (abbreviated as Telcos) are charging customers based on their data usage. Customers will be allowed data transfer based on the plan they have subscribed to, and after the data limit is crossed, there will be no further data transfer till the subscriber gets a recharge. This can be inconvenient for the subscriber, so he would like to find out if there are any unlimited data plans in Sg available.
Data transfer
The data transfer for any internet connection consists of data uploaded and data downloaded. If the internet connection is not working, no data will be downloaded though some data will be uploaded. The definition for data transfer considered for each plan will vary depending on the telco selected. Typically the data uploaded is added to the data downloaded while calculating the data transfer for a customer. The Internet service providers (ISPs) realize that the internet usage of subscribers will vary significantly. Hence based on the average monthly data transfer, the internet user should choose a suitable plan from the different ISPs.
User profile
The internet usage of a subscriber will vary to a great extent depending on the profile of the user. Some internet users require internet access mainly for checking their emails, and paying their bills, so the data transfer per day is very less, typically 100 MB or less. In contrast younger people are watching and uploading videos online extensively, the video files are larger in size compared to text files so more data transfer is required. They are also spending time updating and posting on their social media websites like Instagram, Facebook which have larger graphics, so they require unlimited data plans. Similarly there are many professionals who are providing social media marketing (SMM) , video marketing and similar services. They require a large amount of data transfer and are interested in cost effective data plans.
Unlimited plans
ISPs are aware that some users require more data transfer compared to others. The ISPs also have a lot of information on the amount of data which their users are consuming. It is observed that in most countries, internet users do not consume more than 1GB of data daily, since they have other work offline. So the ISPs are advertising unlimited plans at affordable prices, usually less than $40 monthly in Singapore, as a marketing gimmick to attract more customers. Though these plans are promoted as having unlimited data, in reality the ISP will limit the monthly data to 100GB per month, or a similar limit. This limit will be mentioned in the fine print for the unlimited plan. The ISP is aware that it is not likely to face any problem for placing a limit on the unlimited plan, since almost no internet user in Singapore will be able to reach the monthly data transfer based on the historical internet usage data which they have.
