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Real Implications of 2G Service Termination for Singapore

I know the article about 2G service termination across singapore from 1st Apr 2017 was written in 2015. But how many of us actually understand the true impact of this termination then? Before things get terminated, we may have felt that since our phone is the latest model or it is at least new, the impact is minimal. But how true is that really?

Please, with Dual SIM feature, it's definitely not a Sunset! It is just the beginning of our agony.. :/

With reference to the article: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/telcos-to-end-2g-services/1916108.html. I mainly only realised the impact since 21 Nov but according to M1, they had terminated the 2G services on their prepaid M Card since 15 Nov. So what does this really mean to us consumers? It means that with the Dual SIM phones out there in the market, you are in for a ride! Because, with Samsung's flagship model S7 or even the exploding model Note 7 that's later than S7, the standby or non data SIM option is only on 2G (you can't change it to 3G or higher). Which means, if you had a pre-paid card such as M1, I'm not sure about other telcos. But once they terminated all the 2G in Apr 2017, it means that Singapore had successfully disabled many of the Dual SIM phones out there in the market because the standby SIM, will never work because 2G is now gone. 

There aren't many options out there with better dual SIM phones for purchase, at least for Samsung, there's definitely no such option available today. I heard that Xiaomi Mi 5 had 3G for the standby slot. So perhaps Xiaomi is really the way to go moving forward if you are looking for Dual SIM options.

But my 2nd SIM slot where I was trying to connect to M Card can't work anymore as I'm one of the people with a phone that didn't support higher than 2G for the 2nd SIM card slot that was on standby. I'm not sure if it was a hardware issue or a possibly software patch that would fix it. But there's no turning back of clock. 2G is ending soon and so will most of the Dual SIM feature.

I urge you that, if you still haven't got a new phone yet, DO NOT ever buy one because of their dual SIM feature, especially if the standby SIM slot won't support beyond 2G. You will regret it for sure unless IDA would reverse the change after reading my feedback to them. Or perhaps if more than just me had send through the feedback.

So what will you do?

Comments

Ru said…
Just an update.. it appears that samsung had fixed their phone to support 3G on the 2nd sim as well so it is working fine again :) how nice was that!

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