By Aloysius Choong
(18/10/2001)(click here for source page)
If you are looking for the right GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) plan, you can only choose from SingTel and M1. StarHub will reportedly launch its commercial service at the end of the year, while Virgin Mobile is not announcing anything just yet. Meanwhile, here's a comparison of the two present GPRS providers.
Essentially, GPRS accounts are charged by the amount of data uploaded or downloaded from the Internet. This is unlike voice calls or surfing by normal wireless dialup which are charged according to time.
GPRS users can choose to surf the Web using the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) browser on their phone or the HTML browser on their handheld or notebook. Do take note that an HTML browser downloads far more data than a WAP browser, hence the former is going to cost more.
What is your money worth?
To illustrate, a typical WAP page contains about 1KB (kilobyte) of information.
Surfing for information on a movie takes about 6KB. Assuming a rate of S$0.005
per kilobyte, that works out to about S$0.03 in charges.
On the other hand, an HTML page, like the one you are reading now, contains almost 90KB. This translates to S$0.45.
A normal text email is about 3KB to 6KB (S$0.015 to S$0.03). Multiply that by the number of mails you are likely to download by GPRS, and you will have an idea of how much you can expect to pay.
Head-to-head with M1 and SingTel
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Above, we've put the M1 and SingTel GRPS charges side by side. It's a straightforward comparison, and shows that M1's plan works out cheaper for heavy users who transfer more than 2MB (about 2,000KB) per month. Below 2MB, SingTel's plan appears cheaper. However, the registration fee for SingTel's GPRS service may discourage some potential users.
Therefore, if you intend to use GPRS for browsing the Web on a PDA or laptop regularly, M1's plan is likely to be more suitable. But if you only need to surf for bits of information now and then, SingTel's deal may come out better, provided you are willing to pay the S$10 one-time fee.