The price difference between residential and commercial is due to QOS or Quality of Service…

I am not a network engineering but from experience, a business plan will outperform a consumer plan even though both have similar speeds…

In my previous office, a network of 20 PCs can comfortably share a 8Mbps corporate plan but a residential 8Mbps plan will struggle to provide decent surfing speed for several PCs.

So perhaps the different group of users are routed to different servers etc where the business users are put ahead of residential users?

It seems like we always end up with the same two incumbents. This duopoly, along with the disconnect between IDA and MDA regarding infrastructure, services, content, and the spirit of competition to drive better pricing and services for consumers, have worked against the best interests of consumers. We are weary of the usual “our customers are very happy with our services” response to complaints, without providing statistical market proof. We are equally weary of seeing this seemingly “consolation prize” partitioning of the market between them. Perhaps it is time that IDA and MDA conduct an extraordinary open, independent, and credible survey on consumer satisfaction regarding the current situation, as well as sentiments on future propects of service quality.

As you have mentioned, problems such as the EPL and Champions League debacle have risen from this and customers have made their dissatisfaction clear, albeit in vain. Granted, the terms of these rights auctions are dictated by the content providers, but as with any nation-wide industries, the relevant government agencies should seriously consider the public’s interests as well. If the argument is to let the free market decide, then why are there terms in the NetCo and OpCo bids to curb these same free market ideals? What is the critieria for deciding when intervention is necessary?

Another example is Starhub removing channels from their analogue cable customers, then claiming to provide “free” additional channels if customers upgrade to digital service. The additional cost per set-top box per month is hardly mentioned.

@Chi-Long: As a local startup game development studio working on digital downloadable content, incubation for digital media in Singapore is somewhat of a joke with regards to internet services. And I won’t even go into the office space incubation pricing. On the flip side, there are many government grants schemes to help financially, of which my startup business has indeed benefitted from.

Internet services for businesses in Singapore are ridiculously priced compared to consumer prices. Even with this new network, wholesale prices for businesses ($75) are more than 3 times higher than for consumers ($21). Once the profit margin for resellers is factored in, it is likely this factor will increase.

There is no real reason for this disparity. Does IDA provide subsidies to Singtel and Starhub for consumers? In a meeting with Singtel Business Customer managers a couple of years ago, we asked why there was such a disparity and they literally looked at each other and replied, “we don’t know”.

With the level of bandwidth usage by consumers today, it is illogical to think that businesses in general would use significantly more bandwidth. After all, usage isn’t supposed to be capped in “unlimited” packages and speed is regulated based on the package. The offer packages of 1.5Mbps DSL lines also does not reflect expectations of high bandwidth usage.

So why do businesses have to pay 3-8 times more than consumer rates in Singapore for essentially the same connection speed and quality, compared to 1-3 times in countries like the US, Japan, Korea, etc? The “value-added” services, with plenty of free open source or commercial alternatives, are no where near worth the additional expense. Is this just a case of “because they can”? It was only in the past one year that business DSL pricing has come down to $100 per month for a meagre 1.5Mbps line. The same service cost as high as $200-$400 the year before and this sudden drop was not reflected in any phenomenon to indicate large scale global or regional factors.

In addition, most web hosting and data centre services and pricing here are years behind countries like the US. We had no response for weeks from Starhub after inquiring, and after an hour long meeting with the same Singtel managers regarding hosting needs, we received such a poor response that we decided to host our servers in the US. Most of the web hosts here provide outdated software packages with usage policies that are overly restrictive in terms of what development tools and testing applications can be hosted and run on servers. Can you imagine trying to develop and test internet-capable applications and services hosted here?

While doing business is Singapore is great, the internet infrastructure and services sector needs a huge wakeup call. As a Singapore business, pretty much all our internet needs are hosted outside the country for better services and pricing. The hype is far outpacing reality. If we are such a connected nation, why do most of our biggest companies like Courts and Challenger, have such poor consumer-facing web presence? Even Borders Singapore, with an established and comprehensive web storefront for their US customers, have not bothered to provide the same service here, despite its Singapore store having once achieved its highest revenue per square foot worldwide.

While competition alone cannot guarantee solutions to all these problems, maintaining the status quo through timid policies or unintentional non-intervention will only hinder our ability to truly develop and incubate web and digital media technologies in Singapore while the rest of Asia catches up or surpasses us with more forward thinking, just as South Korea did.

Hmmm… At least the bid didn’t go to SingTel. Or else the public can charge what open loop unbundling of the network if they owned both the NetCo and OpCo? Yeah, sure there are restrictions, but it would still have seemed a little… monopolistic.

As you said, a duopoly of SingTel and StarHub sounds a little deja vu. All the earlier bids by foreign companies (like British Telecoms) all fell out one by one after they looked at the terms and walked away.

I hope that the groundwork has been laid to create a really level playing field for the market. Think IDA has done what it could (given what the government was willing to fork out), and I’m slightly optimistic, but I could be wrong.

And you’re right — content IS the issue. Besides licensing of content issues, which you talked about, one main thing to make the NGNBN a reality are the content services — e.g. telemedicine, video telepresence in every house — that will ride on it.

It’s not a field of dreams in which you build the infrastructure and the content will come naturally. It’s a tandem dance, and the content side also needs to be built up. Companies in the content services space likely need to be incubated or lured to Singapore, and whether it’s IDA or MDA (or MTI or EDB), this aspect can’t be ignored.

Else the infrastructure will just sit there and be a big white elephant infrastructure pipe that nobody uses.