As at 31 December 2005, Singapore’s cellular mobile penetration was 97.8%, which was 5.6 percentage points higher than that a year ago¹. Given the maturity of the cellular mobile market in Singapore, growth in customer numbers and penetration is limited. During the year, a significant portion of the market’s growth was driven by the prepaid segment, and this was reflected in M1’s performance.

With effect from 1 November 2005, the regulatory authorities implemented more stringent prepaid registration requirements and controls. These include production of specific identification documents for verification, use of a prescribed electronic registration system and imposition of a prescribed limit of prepaid cards that can be sold to an individual customer. A six-month transition period has been allowed for existing prepaid customers to be registered. Following the expiry of this transition period, unregistered cards are to be disconnected. This is expected to have some negative impact on the reported prepaid customer base.

Other sources of growth for M1 during the year were non-voice services and international call services, and going forward, these will continue to be important. M1 continues to focus on developing and introducing innovative and exciting products and services in order to encourage customers to use their mobile phones for new forms of communication, information and entertainment. As for international call services, growth will come from gaining market share in the corporate fixed line segment and increasing roaming usage by travellers, both inbound and outbound.

¹ Based on published IDA statistics as at December 2005