Tech Awards 2024 Readers' Choice Results - Part 7
You've read our picks in the Editor's Choice series showcasing the best products of the year as tested by our editorial team, and now we present the results of the Readers' Choice series of Tech Awards 2024. This segment of the awards highlights the top tech brands and services in Singapore, as chosen by you.
This year, we had 47 award categories for polling and over 5,600 voters. After a month of compiling the results, we're ready to share the outcome to help Singaporeans make an informed buying decision and highlight why these brands came out ahead.
This article is Part 7 (out of 8) and covers the six awards that comprise the Best of Service Providers. Be sure to check out the rest the results from all the other categories that have been published previously. Meanwhile, here are the contents of this article:-
- Best Telco Service Provider
- Best MVNO Service Provider
- Best Fibre Broadband Service Provider
- Best Pay TV Service Provider
- Best Video Streaming Service Provider
- Best Security Software Brand
Best Telco Service Provider - Singtel / GOMO
One of the few brands that have dominated their categories for the entirety of our Tech Awards, Singtel clinches Best Telco Service Provider for the 15th year running with 50% of the total votes. The brand saw a substantial dip in sentiment last year, with a winning margin of just 7%, the lowest they've polled in the past 5 years. However, Singtel has since rebounded to almost match the peak of 2021, while StarHub did not manage to hold on to their gains. An Open Signal report in Nov 2023 showed that Singtel topped most of the 5G Experience categories, while a newer nPerf report favours StarHub for download speeds, latency, and streaming. However, 5G is a hotly contested battleground in Singapore, and Singtel's strong results this year could be due in part to the efforts in improving competitiveness and features of their mobile plans, such as bundled Disney+ subscriptions and Data Bank through their MVNO sub-brand GOMO.
Best MVNO Service Provider - MyRepublic
Unlike the main telco's back-and-forth fight between Singtel and StarHub, votes for Best MVNO has never been clearer. We've only separated independent MVNOs from Telco-run MVNOs since the 2022 polls onward, and in the last three years, MyRepublic has steadily increased their vote share from 46% (2022), to 55% (2023) , and has now crossed the 60% mark in this year's polls. The groundwork that MyRepublic laid out such as offering bundled roaming data as a perk has paid off. While almost all operators and plans have similar features today, MyRepublic's brand image continues to grow. In second place, Circles.Life launched quite a few campaigns in 2023 such as the Circle of Joy loyalty program and Delighting You promotion. However, the discontinuation of their S$0 Flexi Plan in early 2024 seems to have negatively impacted consumer sentiment in our latest polls.
Best Fibre Broadband Service Provider - MyRepublic
MyRepublic dethroned Singtel for Best Fibre Broadband Service Provider last year, and continues to grow mindshare with our readers, winning the category soundly in this year's polls with 54% of overall votes, a 13% gain from 2023. Coincidentally, StarHub saw a massive 13% drop in votes, going from 22% in 2023 to just 9% this year. If you remember, StarHub acquired a majority stake in MyRepublic's fibre broadband business in 2022. So, we can draw two conclusions from the Best Fibre Broadband polls since then. Firstly, it would seem to have an immediate effect of boosting MyRepublic's popularity, perhaps in the way of Telco vs MVNO, where the newer and more agile MyRepublic is favoured. That direct 13% shift is very interesting because the nett effect is like moving votes from one's left hand to the right hand; StarHub and MyRepublic actually retain the same combined 63% as they did last year. The actual mover here is Singtel, with a 5% gain over last year's results, at the direct expense of M1. Perhaps the free ice cream last National Day did help after all.
We would also like to point out that this year's polls we done just before Simba joined the fibre broadband fray with the rise of ultra high-speed broadband starting from 2.5Gbps. We now have up to 10Gbps plans from almost all major service providers, MyRepublic, StarHub, Singtel, ViewQuest, so we may see another big shakeup in next year's polls because of this development. M1 is the only holdout as of this writing.
Best Pay TV Service Provider - Singtel TV
As of last year's Tech Awards, this category has traditionally been a two-way battle between StarHub TV and SingTel TV. This is the first year that M1's Eazie TV service has grown sufficiently to make a showing, and we would even say that an 8% vote share is a decent result for the first time out. However, don't let that yellow wedge in the chart distract you from looking closely at the winner this year. Singtel TV has actually managed to edge StarHub out and is your new Best Pay TV Service Provider. We didn't note any particular standout announcements over 2023, but perhaps opening EPL jitters caused StarHub to lose some votes, along with their decision to pull out some channel offerings in their existing TV packs. The last time Singtel won this category was in 2019.
Best Video Streaming Service Provider - Netflix
Despite the fact that the streaming wars are well in motion, Singapore's palate for Best Video Streaming Service Provider continues to be Netflix. This is despite the fact they no longer have a near monopoly like they did back in 2021. Also, since the Disney+ launched in 2021, they've not been able to capture our reader's votes, and has in fact lost some mind share this year, with a 3% decline in votes. While Disney owns some of the most popular franchises such as Star Wars, Marvel, and Frozen (yes, I know it's been a decade, but it's still what my niece wants to dress up as today), they are still very much limited to a highly targeted fan base, as opposed to the wider, general appeal of Netflix's wide catalogue. We're also sure that the various price hikes on both Disney+ and Netflix didn't help either.
Best Security Software Brand - McAfee
This is a new category for Tech Awards 2024, and if you're wondering why it took us this long to include this into our survey, well, we questioned ourselves too. Cybersecurity has become a major talking point as threats and attacks have evolved to become more sophisticated and deadly. Gone are the days of the simple virus, where getting a few files corrupted feels more like a playful prank compared to the identity, information and financial theft of today's phishing and malware attacks. The brands in the survey are probably all too familiar, as anti-virus software have been around probably as long as modern operating systems have and all of these providers have evolved their offerings to better protect your systems, phones and devices with some form of internet security solutions. We won't go into the full history of the first ever computer virus or anti-virus, a cool bit of trivia here is that McAfee, our inaugural winner of Best Security Software Brand, is one of the oldest anti-virus companies, founded in 1987.
That wraps up the Readers' Choice voting segment for the Best of Service Providers, but don't forget to check out the results in these other categories:-
- Part 1: Best of Personal Computing Brands
- Part 2: Best DIY Computing Brands
- Part 3: Best Mobile Tech Brands
- Part 4: Best Lifestyle Tech Brands
- Part 5: Best Home Appliances Brands
- Part 6: Best Home Entertainment Brands
- Part 7: Best Service Provider Brands (this article)
- Part 8: Best Tech Brands in Gaming
Lastly, don't forget that we've also published our Editor's Choice results here to help you get the best of the best gear.
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