Citing poor feedback, TPG ends free roaming in Malaysia and Indonesia

In an announcement yesterday, Singapore's upcoming fourth telco, TPG announced that they were pulling the plug on their free data roaming trials in Malaysia and Indonesia that they first launched mid-2019. 

Under the plan, users were able to make unlimited calls to Singapore mobile numbers and enjoy 20 minutes of call time to fixed lines in Singapore while roaming in those two countries. In addition, all incoming calls and SMS messages were free. And since mobile data roaming was free, WhatsApp and other such data-driven apps worked for free too.

Even better, there was no need to top up for any additional roaming subscription as it was part of the users existing service.

Without revealing exactly what feedback they received, TPG announced the decision to temporarily suspend Malaysia and Indonesia roaming from 16 January 2020 citing poor customer feedback.

The telco said they would be reviewing options to provide better quality and coverage and expected to resume roaming services to these two destinations shortly. They did not however announce an expected timeframe.

TPG did reveal that they will be offering free trial roaming to the Philippines from 31 January 2020.

Since winning the right to be Singapore's fourth telco in 2016, TPG has been trying a number of different ways to stand out from the incumbent crowd.

Besides the free data roaming, they also offer their initial trial customers a SIM-only plan that provided unlimited data and free mobile to mobile calls.

This article was firs published in Hardware Zone.