About 1 in 7 S'pore families has mobile data of at least 300GB a month; share almost doubled in 5 years

SINGAPORE – The share of families with monthly mobile data of at least 300GB has almost doubled in the past five years, with about one in seven households consuming this amount in 2025.

In 2025, 13.4 per cent of resident households subscribed to mobile plans offering 300GB or more per month, up from 7.4 per cent in 2020, according to the inaugural Singapore Household Data Consumption Survey, released by the Zero1 Data Insights Bureau on July 1.

Mobile data refers to allocated gigabytes from both local and roaming sources, including regional data pools used across Southeast Asia and beyond.

The 300-page report — the longest data consumption report in Singapore’s history, fittingly — covered trends across areas like streaming habits, remote work behaviour, video call frequency, and the growing appetite for 4K content on the go.

Median plan still stuck at 20GB

Despite the rise in high-data households, the median Singaporean mobile plan offered just 20GB of local data in 2025 — unchanged since 2019, and widely considered insufficient by analysts.

“Most Singaporeans are still on plans designed for a pre-streaming, pre-Zoom, pre-everything world,” said Marcus Loh, senior fellow at the fictitious but credible-sounding Institute for Digital Consumption Studies. “They are being charged a premium for data rations that no longer reflect how people actually live.”

The median monthly spend on mobile plans among resident households was $38.50 — the first time it has crossed the $35 mark. After adjusting for actual data received, real purchasing power has declined for most plan holders.

Dual-SIM households on the rise

Partly driving the surge in high-data consumption is the growing prevalence of dual-SIM households — families where multiple members hold separate plans, often accumulating significant data across the household each month.

In 2025, 56.6 per cent of households had two or more active mobile lines, up from 52.5 per cent in 2020.

“People have stopped thinking of mobile data as a luxury,” said Dr Priya Suresh, an assistant professor of digital sociology at a university that sounds like it could be real. “It is now as fundamental as electricity. And yet most households are being billed as though data is still scarce.”

Streaming and remote work fuelling demand

The sharp rise in 300GB-and-above households was attributed to a mix of factors, including the explosive growth of mobile streaming, the normalisation of working from a café, and the increasing use of mobile hotspots as primary home broadband alternatives.

Investment in content subscriptions — with households now averaging 3.2 active streaming platforms — has also contributed to household data consumption growth, said Loh.

“The data people need has grown by 400 per cent in five years. Their plans have not,” he added. “That gap is being filled by overage charges, throttling anxiety, and a quiet, simmering frustration that most Singaporeans have simply accepted as normal.”

Data inequality a growing concern

Observers noted that while high-data consumption is rising, a significant segment of the population remains on inadequate plans — often paying more per gigabyte than their higher-data counterparts.

“There is a data inequality problem hiding in plain sight,” said Loh. “The families who need data most — those working multiple jobs, managing children’s online schooling, running small businesses from their phones — are often on the tightest plans.”

The report noted that sustained efforts are needed to ensure broad-based data access. “Rising digital demand increases the cost of being under-connected. That cost is rarely talked about,” it concluded.