How we make money
At WhistleOut, we pride ourselves on our independence.
- Product and service providers don’t need a commercial relationship with us to be included in our plan search results or in other areas of our website.
- Recommendations for products or services in our guides, news, and reviews are based on our expertise and not our commercial relationships.
When you click on a plan or product on our website, we may receive payment from the product or service provider. However, except for some advertising, we do not alter or move plan or product listings based on commercial arrangements. Where Featured Result ‘Ads’ do exist, they are clearly separated from the results table and marked as advertisements.
When you use our mobile and internet plan search tool, we will always show you the single most relevant product result for each supplier -- based on your search criteria and ranked by sorting options that you control. For suppliers with whom we have commercial relationships, we will then show additional listings beyond their most relevant result.
Who we are
WhistleOut was founded in Australia in 2008 on the assumption that you shouldn't need to be a genius to get a great phone or internet plan. Despite how confusing this industry can be, we knew that people just needed clear information to make a good decision.
After success in Australia, we’ve brought the site to Singapore and currently help thousands of Singaporeans each month compare mobile phone and broadband plans.
Read more about WhistleOut.
Our experts
To deliver accurate, up-to-date plan information and advice we employ:
- Product experts who check every plan in our database against the current offers on the service provider's websites
- Telco editors who use that information to produce original guides, news and reviews to help you make sense of the market
It’s a big job and currently our data team maintains over 300 plan combinations and we estimate that we make hundreds of changes to our database each month. While we don't track pricing for every provider and product in the market, we do our best to cover as many as possible while not compromising on our rigorous process.
As part of our service promise, we commit to including at least the top ten providers of Mobile Phone and broadband Plans and currently we have 16 mobile phone carriers and 7 broadband service providers listed.
Our editors are also constantly adding to and updating our library of hundreds of guides, news and reviews.Meet our team below, or check out guides, news and reviews for mobile phones and internet.
Product experts
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Crystal Feng
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Arpita Srivastava
Editorial team
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Georgia Dixon
Managing Editor -
Hannah Geremia
Editor
Regular contributors
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Brodie Fogg
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Fergus Halliday
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Nathan Lawrence
Editor's Picks
At WhistleOut, we run monthly Editor’s Picks to find the best phone and internet plans for Singaporeans with a range of needs.
Service providers are not required to have a commercial relationship with WhistleOut to be selected for an Editor’s Pick. We review the biggest cross section of providers possible. We always include the top 10 service providers in each category, plus many smaller providers. The WhistleOut Editor’s Picks are judged by our team of product experts who award three, two and one points to the providers of the best plans in each category on a monthly basis.
FAQs
Identifying commercial results
Any product listed that includes a 'Go to Site' link is a commercial partner. In addition, links accompanied by text such as ‘See Deal’, ‘Buy Now’, ‘View Plan’, ‘See on Amazon’ or other such retailers, will usually be links to commercial partners.
Privacy and personal information
We don’t collect any personal details unless you offer them to use (signing up for a newsletter, for example), and we won’t contact you unless you ask us to. You can read more about this in our privacy policy.
Product sorting in the search results
Users have control over how products in our search result are sorted. By default, search results are usually sorted by lowest price. Users then have a range of options to view the results.
- Highest speed (Broadband) - based on provider-reported typical evening speeds which are the download speeds during peak times (7pm and 11pm).
- Most data (Broadband & Mobile) - sorts plans by data, it is particularly useful if you have filtered results to a price range and you want to see which plans have the highest data allowance.
- 24 month cost (Mobile) - For comparison purposes, calculates the cost of plans over two years, to account for upfront costs and short-term discounts.
- Most popular/Popularity (Broadband & Mobile) - this is user generated popularity based on page views and clicks (purchasing intent) of each service provider or product on WhistleOut in the last seven days. The popularity sort does not reflect real world market share.
- Maximum saving (Mobile) - Calculates the $ value of any discounts and offers over the life of the plan.
Product sorting in our content
WhistleOut is a search engine that uses a proprietary algorithm to create a list of results based on the data inputs. This might be entering an address, selecting a phone, data, speed or price requirements and many more. Based on the inputs, we generate a set of results from our database containing key information designed to help users compare. The ranking of products in the WhistleOut results table is performed using the following criteria, subject to the limitations on the information we provide as set out below:
- the number of features requested by the consumer that the product contains;
- the quantity of a particular feature offered by the product, e.g. we treat 20GB of download usage as being better than 10GB of download usage; and
- the relative price of the product.
The highest ranked product in a WhistleOut results list at any given time will be the product which generally provides the most usage and features for the consumer for the lowest price (with the exception of "Featured Results").
Where two products have the same monthly price, the higher ranking product will be the product with the lowest overall Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) when all fees and incentives over the life of the contract for the product that you specify when using the service have been accounted for.
Where two products have the same TCO, the product with the most of each feature will be ranked higher.
Providers that we don’t compare
We can't cover all products in the market as the product maintenance burden is too large, but we always endeavour to include at least the top ten service providers and usually many more. We maintain pricing combinations (deals, promotions, products, fees) for the thousands of products in our database. We're also aware that showing too many products can be a little confronting for some users, and might make browsing the results seem like a daunting task for them. We endeavour to make the results as accurate and comprehensive as we can, while making them easy to follow. To aid this process we include filter options and navigation tabs with each set of query results so users can best hone in on the results most suitable to them.
Testing of the products listed on the website
We collect information about plans as disclosed by the service providers, and maintain the prices and features. We don't test each service, and we rely on the service providers for factually correct pricing.
We do test devices such as smartphones, earbuds, smartwatches, modems and tablets, for the purposes of review. Devices we review are typically loaned to us by the manufacturer, however our reviews are conducted impartially and without financial incentive. Follow the links to read our mobile phone device and accessory reviews, internet device reviews and tablet reviews.
