Case Study: Singtel achieves restored app performance and proves slowdowns were not caused by the network with HeadSpin

How HeadSpin helped Singtel analyze root cause of an app slowdown

Singtel, the Singapore-based communications operator, was asked to investigate a major slowdown affecting a global social media app — users were seeing basic functions take over a minute and images rendering very slowly. Suspecting a telco issue, Singtel engaged HeadSpin and used HeadSpin’s real-device performance monitoring on their network to trace the problem.

HeadSpin’s data showed high API and CDN latency (average TTFB ~700+ ms, with some servers >2s), slow TCP/TLS handshakes (>1s for some third‑party SDKs), and IPs resolving to North American servers instead of Singapore. Armed with these insights from HeadSpin, Singtel demonstrated the issue was app-side routing to distant servers, switched to a lower-latency CDN, and restored normal app performance in Singapore.

Singtel