Virtual telcos spark AI price war in Singapore: $8/month bundles pack multiple premium AI models

Singapore's virtual telecom operators are igniting a price war in artificial intelligence, bundling mobile plans with access to premium AI models for as little as $8 per month. The move is transforming how consumers access paid AI services in the city-state.

Circles.Life started the trend in the second quarter of 2025 with CirclesAI, giving customers access to paid versions of six popular AI models including OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Anthropic's Claude through the telco's own app. The most basic bundle costs $8 per month and includes 500GB of 4G data, unlimited local calls, and full CirclesAI access.

On June 17, StarHub's no-frills sub-brand giga! countered with gigaFLEX+, offering access to 23 paid AI models from 11 providers at $13.90 per month — a price locked for the first 9,999 customers for one year before reverting to $19.90. The plan explicitly targets users aged 15 to 29.

Both plans offer unlimited queries per model, 300 monthly image generations, and up to 10 deep research articles. However, they do not provide full access to all premium features available on the native AI platforms. Instead, the telcos act as AI aggregators, pooling access through their proprietary apps.

IDC senior research director Nikhil Batra said the Singapore consumer mobile market is very competitive and an AI bundle is a way to differentiate. He called giga!'s offering a defensive move to test the market for the 15-29 segment without cutting prices on StarHub's main brand. Batra expects more telcos to follow.

To put the pricing in perspective, unlimited ChatGPT queries on OpenAI's own website costs at least $11 per month. Indian telcos have pioneered similar bundling: Reliance Jio offers 18 free months of Gemini AI Pro, and Airtel offered a free one-year Perplexity Pro subscription in 2025.

User reception has been mixed. A 19-year-old national serviceman named Lee said he wanted coding functions from ChatGPT and Claude but found that coding is not included in CirclesAI and the app lacks chat history. A 20-year-old student named Kia Wen, however, said 'CirclesAI was definitely the biggest incentive to use a Circles data plan,' prioritizing price over advanced features.

The telco-as-AI-aggregator model could significantly lower the barrier for casual AI users, though limitations around chat memory, feature depth, and data coverage will determine whether it can challenge direct subscriptions to native AI platforms over the long term.