Virtual telcos bundle mobile plans with access to paid AI models for as low as $8 a month
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Telcos are beginning to offer access to premium AI features to incentivise customers to use their plans.
ST PHOTO: KUA CHEE SIONG
Jemima Ryan
- Virtual telcos Circles.Life and giga! offer mobile plans bundling access to multiple paid AI models for as low as $8 a month, targeting youths and AI users in Singapore.
- These plans provide unlimited AI queries and limited image generation and deep research articles but do not have full access to all premium AI features.
- User feedback is mixed; some appreciate the low cost and AI access, while others are affected by limitations like no AI memory feature and less effective mobile data coverage.
AI generated
SINGAPORE – Two local telcos have started a price war in the artificial intelligence space, bundling mobile plans with access to the latest paid AI models for as low as $8 a month.
Virtual telcos Circles.Life and giga!, a no-frills sub-brand of telco StarHub, offer similar benefits in their plans, with unlimited queries to each AI model, the ability to generate 300 images and up to 10 deep research articles a month through the telcos’ respective apps.
Circles.Life started the price war in the second quarter of 2025 with CirclesAI, which gives access to the paid versions of six popular AI models, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude.
The AI services are available through the Circles.Life app when customers buy a mobile plan that comes with CirclesAI.
The most basic AI bundled plan costs $8 a month. It comes with 500GB of 4G local data and unlimited local calls, as well as Circles.AI access.
On June 17, giga! jumped in, launching its gigaFLEX+ plan, providing access to 23 paid AI models from 11 tech providers for just $13.90 a month.
This price applies to the first 9,999 customers in the first year, after which the plan will cost $19.90 a month. The plan targets those aged 15 to 29.
While Circles.Life and giga! do not give access to the full range of features in premium AI plans, they allow users to try out various AI models and providers without paying for separate subscriptions by acting as AI aggregators via their proprietary apps.
A similar aggregator based in India, called AI Fiesta, offers access to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Deepseek, Gemini and Grok for 999 rupees (S$13.55) per month through either its website or app.
Comparatively, access to unlimited queries to ChatGPT on OpenAI’s website costs at least $11 a month.
The Circles.Life and giga! bundles mirror early efforts by Singapore’s Singtel and India’s Bharti Airtel to throw in AI access with telco plans.
In both cases, Singtel and Airtel offered customers a full subscription to an AI provider’s own product rather than aggregate AI access through their telco apps.
For instance, Singtel offered a free one-year Perplexity Pro subscription to its customers for a limited time in early 2025. In 2025, Airtel also offered a free one-year Perplexity Pro subscription to its customers.
Airtel is now offering a free one-year subscription to Adobe Creative Express.
India’s largest telco Reliance Jio is currently bundling a free 18-month subscription to Google’s Gemini AI Pro for customers.
While Circles.Life and giga!’s mid-tier AI features fall short of the premium AI plans provided by Singtel, Airtel and Jio, they are value for money and are catching on with customers, said Nikhil Batra, a senior research director at market research firm IDC.
“The Singapore consumer mobile market is very competitive, and an AI bundle is a way to differentiate,” said Batra, adding that Circles also licenses its software platform to overseas telcos and needs to demonstrate that its platform works.
“Circles.Life and giga!’s own apps give access to a range of AI models that are generally cheaper than the premium flagship products AI firms currently sell,” he noted, adding that he expects more telcos to do the same.
When contacted, M1 and Singtel declined to comment on whether they will offer AI bundles with mobile plans. Simba Telecom did not respond to queries.
Batra said that giga!’s new offering is mainly a defensive move to test the market.
“Currently it only targets 15-to-29-year-olds, and it has done this so StarHub can compete on price and AI features for that segment, without cutting prices on its main brand,” he said.
AI is increasingly becoming a part of Singaporeans’ daily lives.
According to software firm Qualtrics’ 2026 Employee Experience Trends Report, more than two-thirds of the 1,000 Singaporean employees surveyed now use AI frequently at work.
However, it is unclear what proportion of these users are willing to pay for access to premium features on the native AI platforms, which can cost over $100 each month for the highest tier of subscription.
A 19-year-old national serviceman who asked to be known only as Lee said he wanted to use the coding functions of ChatGPT and Claude.
“I thought I would get an actual account from the AI service providers,” he said.
But coding is not included in CirclesAI. While Lee has stayed on the Circles.Life plan he bought for data connectivity, he no longer uses CirclesAI as it also does not remember his chat history.
The lack of chat history is the subject of criticism from many online netizens, who find it inconvenient for long-term projects.
But for casual users like Kia Wen, 20, price is more important than having chat histories. “CirclesAI was definitely the biggest incentive to use a Circles data plan,” said the student.
