The Infocomm Development Authority figures for June, published on its website, show the number of mobile subscribers climbed 16,900 in June from May, reaching 3.34 million or 80.1 percent of the population.

In contrast, the number of fixed line subscribers fell nearly 80,000 to 1.91 million or 45.9 percent of the population while the number of pager subscribers dropped more than 9,000 to just 5.3 percent of the population.

The Business Times said Wednesday it was the first time the number of mobile phone subsribers had breached 80 percent of the population, while the fall in fixed line use was the 15th straight month of declines.

Research manager Natasha Tan told the newspaper there was still room for mobile growth with the increasing popularity of data services, such as enhanced SMS and multimedia messaging.

At the same time, she cautioned that the market was approaching saturation level.

"Growing the mobile penetration rate to these levels is a double-edged sword for mobile telcos," Tan, from industry analyst firm IDC, said.

"There is less headroom for profitable growth but they still have some room to play with in terms of growing the (average revenue per user rates)."

Penetration rates in Singapore still lag behind the Taiwan and Hong Kong markets, where it is common to have more than one mobile subscription per person, but they are far higher than most other Asian countries.

SPACE.WIRE