The mobile network market is becoming increasingly competitive. Just recently, M1 revamped their whole mobile plan, reducing its initial 19 plans to just two. Not to be outdone, new telco operator, giga! also launched their new mobile service.
Though giga! is affiliated with StarHub, it is considered a sub-brand that works independently from StarHub’s business and has their own technology platforms and customer support.
giga! is currently offering a base 25GB contract-free plan for $25 that comes with 1,000 minutes of talk time and up to 1,000 SMSes, with free incoming calls and SMS. The most intriguing feature of this plan is that consumers are able to transfer over unused data from the previous month; giga! is currently the only one offering this feature. This can be done for another 2 renewal cycles with a cap of 25GB.
Additionally, if you sign up for the base plan from now till 18 June 2019, you will be eligible to have your first month of service be free of charge.
Should the 25GB data be insufficient for your normal usage, they have also offered add-ons to the base plan with additional 1GB data packs available to purchase at $2 each. App-specific add-ons are also available, with 1GB of data for Instagram and Facebook as well as a WhatsApp specific pack offering 1GB of data; both packages are priced at $1.
Finally, they also have data roaming options available. Styled as Jetset giga!, roaming data is priced at $5 for 1GB of data that is valid for 5 days. This is activated upon reaching your destination, rather than you having to manually activate it.
To emphasise the flexibility of the giga! brand, these data roaming packs can be stacked up to five times at any point of time depending on the user’s needs. If a second pass is purchased at a later date before the first pass has expired or run out, it will stretch out the validity of any unused roaming data from the first pass.
Right now this service is available for these 14 countries: Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
Here is what they offer at a glance:
| Data plan | 25GB |
| Talktime | 1,000 mins |
| SMSes | 1,000 |
| Free content | Incoming calls/SMS and Caller ID Leftover data from previous month can be transferred for up to 2 months |
| Add-ons | Data pack: Local data at 1GB for $2 Insta ‘n’ FB pack: Local data for Instagram and Facebook usage at 1GB for $1 WhatsApp pack: Local data for WhatsApp usage at 1GB for $1 |
| Data roaming | 1GB for $5, valid for 5 days (stackable up to 5 times) |
giga! is a fully digital service, something that they are quick to tout. That means that everything can be done through the app, from the ID verification during profile setup to contacting customer service. Customer service, in particular, has an intelligent bot called Gino to help with queries in addition to live customer service operators.
To differentiate themselves with other telcos, giga! also has made user accounts customisable. You can pick a nickname for your profile as well as choosing which avatar to front your dashboard in the giga! app; right now there are 8 to choose from. Indeed there is variety in your options.
That variety also extends to the telco market, with it ballooning with giga!’s introduction. giga! now joins mainstays M1 and Singtel in having to fend off newer competition in the form of Circles.Life and TPG. It makes for an interesting saga to follow, but the main positive is that we consumers get to profit.
Photos by Feriadi of the DANAMIC Team. In-App visuals courtesy of giga!
