Shopping in Singapore? | From Pager to Handphone to Smartphone — How Mobile Shopping Changed Everyday Singapore

SINGAPORE / SHOPPING CULTURE / MOBILE PHONE HISTORY

By The Memory desk · Historical reference · Sources checked 7 October 2026

Singapore mobile phone history begins with the pager. Paging services started in the early 1970s, cellular telephones arrived in August 1988 and the digital GSM network followed in 1994. Competition came in two steps: M1 opened on 1 April 1997, ending Singapore Telecom’s monopoly on mobile service, and StarHub followed on 1 April 2000, the day the whole telecoms market was liberalised. The first iPhone sold officially here, the iPhone 3G, went on sale through Singtel on 22 August 2008.

The hinge of the story is the late 1990s. In June 1998 Singapore had about 1.36 million paging subscribers, roughly 40 per cent of the population (contemporary reports put it between just under 40 and 43 per cent) and, according to the trade paper RCR Wireless, the highest paging penetration in the world. Barely a year later, in August 1999, mobile phones overtook pagers. This history traces that arc from the pager to the handphone and then the smartphone, and points to our companion pieces on telco shops, independent dealers and launch-day queues for the retail side of each step.

Singapore’s mobile story at a glance

Paging begins	Early 1970s, according to the National Heritage Board
Cellular phone service begins	August 1988
Digital GSM network	1994, built by Singapore Telecom
Mobile competition	M1 from 1 April 1997; StarHub from 1 April 2000
Paging peak	About 1.36 million subscribers, June 1998
Mobile overtakes paging	August 1999
First official iPhone	iPhone 3G, through Singtel, 22 August 2008
2G switched off	From 1 April 2017
Today	Four mobile network operators (Singtel, StarHub, M1 and SIMBA) and a field of cheaper virtual operators, as of October 2026

Early 1970s to 1998: why did Singapore have so many pagers?

The National Heritage Board dates Singapore’s first paging services to the early 1970s, and for the next two decades the pager was the usual way to be reachable away from a desk. The basic model was simple. A caller dialled the pager’s number, keyed in two asterisks and hung up; the pager then showed the caller’s number, and its owner went to find a telephone and ring back. A Motorola pager in the national collection, carrying the Singapore Telecom logo, works exactly this way. Later alphanumeric models could display short coded messages.

For most of this period the state operator ran the service. Telecoms was formed in 1974 by merging the Singapore Telephone Board with the Telecommunication Authority of Singapore, and in 1989 it was corporatised as Singapore Telecom, the company now known as Singtel. Pagers were also made here. Motorola manufactured models such as the Jazz in Singapore during the 1990s and ran a regional design centre for paging products, the Heritage Board records.

By the late 1990s paging was open to competition, and in 2000 four operators were selling it: SingTel Paging, M1, ST SunPage and Hutchison IntraPage. Subscriptions peaked at about 1.36 million in June 1998. Why so many? This is our reading rather than a documented finding, but the pattern is not hard to explain. A pager was cheap to buy and run, while a GSM handphone still cost about S$2,400 as late as 1994. Singapore was also thick with telephones to call back from, in offices, at shop counters and in the public payphones that stood in housing estates, hawker centres and malls. A device that only needed to tell you to find a phone suited a city where one was rarely far away.

August 1988: the first handphones

Cellular telephone service began in August 1988. The first sets were large, bulky and good only for voice calls. One had an unusual afterlife: a boxed 1990 Motorola handphone, complete with adapter, two batteries, a pouch, a desk dock and an instruction manual, went into a time capsule that Deputy Prime Minister Ong Teng Cheong buried in 1990, to be opened in 2015, Singapore’s 50th year of independence. It is now in the Heritage Board’s collection.

Smaller models followed. Motorola’s MicroTAC, launched in 1989 with a mouthpiece that folded over the keypad, was sold as a pocket-size cellular phone; it reached Singapore in the 1990s and is remembered as an icon of the period. Even so, the handphone stayed a minority possession for years. At the end of 1994 Singapore had about 248,000 cellular subscribers, a penetration rate of nearly 9 per cent.

1994: GSM, the Nokia 2110 and the text message

The step that made the modern handphone possible came in 1994, when Singapore Telecom opened a digital network on the GSM standard, an investment the Heritage Board puts at $94 million. GSM carried voice and short text messages. The Nokia 2110, one of the first GSM handsets sold here and among the smallest of its day, cost about S$2,400 at launch, which kept it to well-off early adopters. It also introduced many Singaporeans to the Nokia ringtone.

Over the next few years network and handsets matured together. In January 1998 SingTel Mobile launched a dual-band service across its GSM 900 and GSM 1800 networks, with Motorola and Bosch handsets able to move between them. The Nokia 6150 of the same year, with a detachable battery and 160-character text messages, is the kind of phone the Heritage Board now keeps to illustrate the period. Texting would become one of the defining habits of the decade that followed.

1997 to 2000: competition, and handphones overtake pagers

Singapore Telecom’s exclusive right to provide mobile service was due to lapse in 1997. In 1996 the government went further and told the company that its remaining monopoly, over fixed lines and international calls, would end on 1 April 2000 instead of 2007, paying it S$1.5 billion in compensation. The new mobile licence went to MobileOne, a consortium of Keppel, Singapore Press Holdings, Cable & Wireless and Hongkong Telecom chosen from five bidders. It began service on 1 April 1997.

Subscriptions climbed quickly. Singapore passed half a million cellular users in May 1997, and by August 1998 the regulator counted 903,000, or 29.1 per cent of the population, close to double in a little over a year. RCR Wireless linked the paging slump directly to the price competition that followed M1’s arrival. In August 1999 mobile penetration overtook paging, and on 1 April 2000 StarHub joined Singtel and M1 with its own mobile network, on the same day the rest of the market was liberalised.

The paging industry shrank fast. Subscriptions fell to 839,100 by December 2000. Hutchison IntraPage, which had no mobile licence to bundle with its pagers, left the business in early 2001 with about 40,000 customers. M1 closed its own paging service at the end of 2003 with around 22,000 users, offering them handsets and letting them keep their pager numbers as mobile numbers. By April 2003 the market was down to 242,700 subscriptions, against 1.12 million in April 1997. How the telcos sold all those new handsets and plans is told in our history of telco shops, contracts and SIM cards.

The 2000s: texting, 3G and an 80 per cent country

By December 2003 mobile penetration had passed 80 per cent, and the regulator described the use of text messages as prolific. Faster data followed: M1 launched Singapore’s first 3G consumer service in February 2005. Handsets of the decade gained colour screens, cameras and music players. We have not found a reliable record of when the first camera phone went on sale here, and would rather say so than guess a date.

Retail in this decade belonged as much to independent shops as to the telcos. Handsets were bought outright, traded in and resold, and parallel imports competed with official sets on price. That trade has its own history in our piece on handphone dealers, trade-ins and bargaining.

2008 onward: the smartphone becomes the shop

The iPhone 3G went on sale through Singtel at midnight on 22 August 2008, on two-year contracts, with the 8GB model at S$348 upfront on a S$56-a-month plan. Singtel kept the iPhone to itself for about 15 months; M1 and StarHub began selling it on 9 December 2009. The crowds that gathered for later models are the subject of our history of smartphone launch queues.

The older network was retired along the way. Singapore had more than 2 million 2G subscriptions in June 2011 but only about 250,000 by 2015, when the regulator stopped registering new 2G-only devices from 15 September and approved the closure of the 2G networks from 1 April 2017. The Nokia-era handsets that depended on 2G lost the networks they were built for.

Meanwhile the phone absorbed things people once bought separately: the camera, the music player, the street directory and, increasingly, the wallet, a shift traced in our history of PayNow, SGQR and mobile wallets. This is our reading rather than a documented turning point, but in under forty years the handphone went from being one of the most considered purchases a Singapore household made to the device most people now do their shopping with.

Seeing old phones and buying new ones today

As of October 2026, the clearest public record of the pager and early handphone years is the National Heritage Board’s collection, searchable on its Roots website. It includes Singapore Telecom pagers, a Motorola Jazz, a Nokia 2110 and the 1990 time-capsule handphone. The listings do not always say whether an object is on display, so check with the museum before making a trip to see one.

Two things from this history still matter to anyone buying a phone now. The shelf price depends on whether the set is an official local one or a parallel import, which our guide to official warranties, parallel imports and trade-ins explains. The monthly bill depends on the plan, and our guide to mobile plans in Singapore compares SIM-only plans with contracts.

A Singapore mobile phone history timeline

• Early 1970s: Paging services begin.
• 1974: Telecoms is formed from the Singapore Telephone Board and the Telecommunication Authority.
• August 1988: Cellular telephone service begins.
• 1989: Telecoms is corporatised as Singapore Telecom.
• 1994: Singapore Telecom opens its GSM network; the Nokia 2110 sells for about S$2,400.
• 1 April 1997: M1 begins mobile service.
• January 1998: SingTel Mobile launches dual-band GSM.
• June 1998: Paging peaks at about 1.36 million subscribers.
• August 1999: Mobile penetration overtakes paging.
• 1 April 2000: StarHub launches as the telecoms market is fully liberalised.
• Early 2001: Hutchison IntraPage leaves the paging business.
• End of 2003: M1 closes its paging service.
• February 2005: M1 launches Singapore’s first 3G consumer service.
• 22 August 2008: Singtel launches the iPhone 3G.
• 9 December 2009: M1 and StarHub begin selling the iPhone.
• 1 April 2017: The 2G networks begin to close.

Questions people ask

When did pagers stop being used in Singapore?

There was no single end date. Paging peaked at about 1.36 million subscribers in June 1998, was overtaken by mobile phones in August 1999 and had fallen to 242,700 subscriptions by April 2003, the year M1 closed its paging service.

When did handphones come to Singapore?

Cellular telephone service began in August 1988. Digital GSM phones, which could send text messages, followed in 1994.

When did M1 and StarHub start?

M1 began mobile service on 1 April 1997, ending Singapore Telecom’s mobile monopoly. StarHub launched on 1 April 2000, the day the telecoms market was fully liberalised.

When did the iPhone come to Singapore?

The iPhone 3G was the first sold officially here, launched by Singtel on 22 August 2008. M1 and StarHub started selling iPhones on 9 December 2009.

When did Singapore switch off 2G?

The 2G networks closed from 1 April 2017, after the regulator stopped registering new 2G-only devices in September 2015.

Sources and further reading

• National Library Board, Infopedia: Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel)
• National Heritage Board, Roots: Manual for operating a pager by Singapore Telecoms (1980s)
• National Heritage Board, Roots: Motorola handphone set from the 1990 time capsule
• National Heritage Board, Roots: Nokia 2110 mobile phone
• RCR Wireless: MobileOne consortium crowned Singapore’s new cellular carrier (1996)
• Telecommunication Authority of Singapore: speech by Director-General Leong Keng Thai (August 1998)
• RCR Wireless: Singapore carrier launches dual-band GSM (February 1998)
• RCR Wireless: Singapore’s paging operators diversify services (May 2000)
• RCR Wireless: Singapore’s Hutchison IntraPage closes operations (February 2001)
• RCR Wireless: Singapore cellular operator closes paging business (September 2003)
• Infocomm Development Authority: press release on the gains from telecoms liberalisation (2004)
• Remember Singapore: The rise and decline of Singapore’s public payphones (2015)
• Infocomm Development Authority: Mobile operators to close 2G networks from 1 April 2017 (2015)
• Macworld: iPhone 3G launches in Singapore (August 2008)
• Network World: Two more operators put iPhone on sale in Singapore (December 2009)

This is a historical reference: operators, plans and prices change, so check the provider before you buy. Read next: Telco shops, contracts and SIM cards · Smartphone launch queues in Singapore · Back to The Memory