The telco regulator in Singapore, Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), regularly publishes a list of facts & figures about the telco industry. It is interesting to look at the figures occasionally to understand the trends affecting telcos and review whether telcos worth investing.
Mobile Services
To investors of the 3 local telcos, the most important figure must be the no. of mobile subscriptions. Fig. 1 below shows the no. of subscribers according to type of network (3G/4G) and payment mode (pre-paid/ post-paid) for 2016 up to Nov.
|
Fig. 1: Mobile Subscriptions |
From the figure, it should come as no surprise that 4G subscriptions are rising as more subscribers switch from 3G to 4G. However, what is surprising is that the 3G pre-paid segment (red line in Fig. 1 above) is fairly resilient, dropping only by 3.4% over the 11 months of 2016 even as the 3G post-paid segment shrank ......