Singtel & LotusFlare

Enabling Prepaid Customers to Purchase Data Plans for a Specific App

Singtel is the largest telecommunications service provider in Singapore, with 4.5 million subscribers, and through its regional operations has a total of 700 million subscribers. Close to 1.5 million mobile subscribers (32%) are in it’s prepaid service branded “hi!”

Challenge

Prepaid subscribers come from a broad range of demographics including children, the elderly and more than 1.35 million foreign domestic workers and laborers. Some subscribers have high usage of specific apps – such as Viber, IMO.IM and WeChat – and want to purchase an app-specific data plan. Being able to offer a data plan for a specific app would typically require the app to have a static IP address.

Solution

Singtel integrated LotusFlare’s patented Dynamic Product Platform (DPP) to enable app based data plans. The DPP capability was integrated to Singtel’s hi! and a section called “App Shop” was added. This enabled all the prepaid subscribers to purchase app based data plans.

Outcome

App-based data plans continue to be central in the hi! prepaid proposition today, just as it was 2 years ago when it was first introduced. App based data plans drive customer engagement and monetization for Singtel. Except for a decline during the few months when Singapore was in lockdown due to the pandemic, the service and DAU (Daily Active Users) continues to be stable and gradually growing.