Lately, SIngtel has been pushing it’s 5G+, marketing it as the fastest 5G available. During the SG60, we managed to get hold of one of the SIM to do a test run.
The free trial of 2 months for SG60 seniors comes with 150 GB of 5G+ data and 50 GB for roaming in Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Thailand.
It is a $2 value Singtel Prepaid Hi! card. It is a 4G sim that works on the 5G Non Stand Alone (5G NSA) network. So no 5G SA access.
I inserted the SIM and powered up the Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G and it took a while for 5G icon to show up. A welcome message SMS was received and the card is activated and ready to run.
I broght the phone and tested around the Clementi Town Centre. Using our usual diagnostic tool on Android. It shows that a particular location has the best signal. In fact, the signal is so strong that that I think it should give me a very good benchmark number.
The phone was connected using DC and connected on anchor band B28 (700) + n78 (3500), a total bandwidth of 20+100 MHz. In most case, the larger the bandwidth the better speed you get. Some other factors will also include the network congestion (peak hours) when too many people are connected to the same cell. Another is line of sight with no obstruction will give you better results. In this case, I suppose the transmitter is somewhere near me.
I did a few runs and this is one of the better results I get at 1016 Mbps downlink and 100 Mbps for uplink. The ping time of 12 ms is impressive. This will result in almost no lagging in scrolling through facebook or youtube loading (provided the server is in not congested).
The same phone with the SIM was tested at various locations of Singapore. The result is about 300 to 600 Mbps on the average. As mentioned before we have to be realistic that every network do have blind spots. For example, it didn’t perform that well in the MRT tunnel.
Seriously, most consumers do not need such high speed unless you download regularly. Such a sim plan will be good if it bundles in lots of data to substitute as home broadband.
As for Roaming, the usual Singtel partner with Maxis in Malaysia which is pretty stable and consistent. It is nice to have 50 GB that can be shared with the main balance of 150 GB. Having different end dates will confuse users. This is something that might need to be improved on.
Competition is heating up with M1 Maxx revamped it’s $10 plan with 5G SA (standalone) plan with large bundle of 400 GB data and shared roaming and 13 GB APAC roam+16 GB international roaming. SIMBA also has similar plans but their 5G NSA is slow due to it’s limited 5G bandwidth. Their roaming is even better than Maxx as it provides Voice Roaming. Eight on the other hand also has similar packages and it is priced at S$8 and S$11.80 with large data bundle and roaming.
So, what are your thoughts on the 5G Prepaid SIM ? Will you pay S$10 per month for this prepaid SIM plan ? Comment on our Facebook page.
