SingTel seeks to tackle mobile network congestion

SINGAPORE — As mobile networks in Singapore get increasingly jammed up by consumers hooked on using devices on the go, SingTel is looking at smarter ways of running its networks to ease some of that congestion.

Laying out the telco’s strategy for the Singapore market, Mr Paul O’Sullivan, CEO for Group Consumer at SingTel, said the company is looking at ways to use data analytics to ensure a smoother surfing experience.

Taking the example of morning rush-hour traffic at MRT stations, Mr O’Sullivan said: “With the growing amount of video and data traffic we see, there are even smarter ways of running networks.

“Before they board the train, lots of people might be looking to download a newspaper or something to read. If I use my analytics carefully, I can realise that and can start caching or storing that content quite close to MRT stations, which takes a load off the networks and give customers a faster experience.”

Mr O’Sullivan was speaking to reporters at the sidelines of an event to announce a partnership with Samsung Electronics — the world’s largest smartphone maker.

With the explosion of smartphone ownership, consumer usage habits have shifted from mainly voice communication and text messaging to high data demand services such as video streaming, which alone gobbles up about 60 per cent of data traffic in Singapore, said SingTel.

This has increased data consumption exponentially, with mobile data traffic in Singapore expected to grow more than 10 times to about 37 Petabytes in 2015 from about 3.1 petabytes in 2010, data from the Infocomm Development Authority shows.

Mr Mark Chong, CEO of International Group Consumer at SingTel, said the telco is also looking at ways to reduce buffering and congestion when too many users log on to the network and download content.

Meanwhile, Mr O’Sullivan added, another of SingTel’s strategies includes a big push to “find ways to digitise the business, making it easier for customers to transact with us”.

“Over the next few years, our goal would be to allow customers to (utilise) many of the functions today for which they would have to call a call centre or visit a store; to allow them to be able to do that on-screen,” he said.

In the third prong of SingTel’s strategy, it is committed to go even further in terms of being the network with the fastest data speed, said Mr O’Sullivan without elaborating.

At the partnership launch event with Samsung yesterday, Mr Moon Soo Kim, President and CEO of Samsung Asia, said the tie-up would allow more technology and services to be offered to mobile customers in emerging markets.

The pair will launch a slew of regional initiatives, including direct billing for Samsung apps, which reduce the need for a credit card, as well as one-stop retail shops combining smartphone and mobile-plan services.

A mobile-app-development programme was also announced. It will identify and accelerate innovative start-ups in the region and give them access to SingTel’s 500 million mobile customers worldwide.