Circles.Life Price Plans
Circles.Life is a Singapore-based consumer brand of Liberty Wireless. It is founded by three entrepreneurs, Rameez Ansar, Abhishek Gupta and Adeel Najam who had previously worked for Temasek Holdings, McKinsey, StarHub and other companies.
It is “sort of” the 4th telco in Singapore if you consider Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MNVO) a telco.
A mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), or mobile other licensed operator (MOLO), is a wireless communications services provider that does not own the wireless network infrastructure over which the MVNO provides services to its customers. An MVNO enters into a business agreement with a mobile network operator to obtain bulk access to network services at wholesale rates, then sets retail prices independently.
In the case of Circles.Life, it is leasing M1’s infrastructure.
MNVO is pretty common in other countries. However in Singapore, Circles.Life is not the first MNVO in Singapore. The first MNVO is Virgin Mobile Singapore back in October 2001 where it partners Singtel.
Price Plan
There is a S$4 upfront cost which is the registration fee and you will get Free SIM Card, Free Delivery of the SIM Card (3-hour time slot) and free number porting.
There is only one monthly base plan with customization (no contract). Similar to Singtel’s SIM Only plan.
The monthly based plan will give you 3GB of data, 100 minutes of talktime and bonus data ranging from 500MB to 4GB. You can get the bonus data by recommending the service to your friend, staying on the telco for X number of months and even being a early beta tester (so go register). Note that there is no SMS included.
Whatsapp data usage will be free, that means it does not count towards your data usage. Also caller number display (Caller-ID) is free as well.
If the bundle usage is not enough for you, you can add more data (1GB S$6/month), talktime (100mins S$4/month) and even SMS (100SMS $S4/month).
They have this thing called “boost” which is a one-time “data boost”. For example, if you are going to exceed your data usage for the month, it doesn’t make sense to pay in block of GB (like all three telcos). You can do a one-time “boost” and that will cost you S$1 for 100MB, S$2 for 250MB and S$3.50 for 500MB. If you forgot to boost your data and it exceeded, you will only pay 20% more of the stated boost price which is still very reasonable.
Upfront Cost
| Item | Price | Valued At |
|---|---|---|
| Registration Fee | S$4 | |
| SIM Card | Free | |
| Delivery Charge (3-hour time slot) | Free | |
| Number Porting | Free |
Monthly Base Plan
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| 3GB Data + 100 Talktime Minutes + Bonus Data (500MB to 4GB) | S$28/month |
| Unlimited WhatsApp + Caller Number Display + Plan Change + Roaming | Free |
Add-ons For Monthly Base Plan
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| 1GB Data | S$6/month |
| 100 Minutes Talktime | S$4/month |
| 100 SMSes | S$4/month |
One-time Boost
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| 100MB Data | S$1 |
| 250MB Data | S$2 |
| 500MB Data | S$3.50 |
Conclusion
If you compare with Singtel SIM Only Plan, Singtel will give you 3GB Data, 2GB Singtel Wi-Fi, 200 minutes talktime for S$25.35. This is cheaper than the base plan of Circles.Life without the bonus data.
However, Singtel charges S$5.35/month for Caller-ID, and hence if you add that in, it is now more expensive than Circles.Life.
I excluded WhatsApp charges because I don’t think it takes up much data. I only use about 100MB per month on WhatsApp.
Discount
My Circles.Life referral code is: IOA0Z
If you use this code, I will get an additional 200 MB of Bonus Data every month and you will get S$20 off your Circles.Life registration fee!
