Users will spend US$65 billion on e-books, games and other content on their smartphones and tablets by 2016, up from this year’s US$40 billion, according to a research report released today.

The upsurge, according to Juniper Research, will be fueled by tablet users buying games, videos and e-books on their mobile devices, along with easier direct payment methods offered on smartphones by telecom operators. …

Broadband users moving in to new homes in Singapore in the years ahead can expect their premises to be already hooked up by a fibre optic point, in addition to the cable TV and phone jacks they get now.

This means they won’t have to arrange for their homes to be wired up separately by national contractor Opennet. That has been a source of irritation for many users, some of whom have had to wait several weeks to activate their link before their fibre broadband service can be turned on. …

Tablet and PC users who want a pay-as-you-use 4G connection can now buy prepaid cards from M1, which unveiled Singapore’s first such service earlier today.

An S$18 micro- or nano-SIM card provides up to 1GB of data for a month, which could translate into hundreds of webpages or just dozens of high-rez videos on YouTube, depending on the content consumed.  …

(source: StarHub)

StarHub is using Singapore’s fibre network to deliver its pay-TV services to offices, restaurants and pubs from March 18, as it seeks to cut down on current terrestrial broadcasts to such business customers. …

Years after Wireless@SG was first rolled out in Singapore, it’s heartening to hear that the free nationwide Wi-Fi service will be extended to at least 2017, while being easier to log in to and faster to surf on.

From next month, users will be able to go online at cafes and other places at up to 2Mbps, up from the current 1Mbps. No big deal, you say, given that smartphones can connect to 4G networks several times faster, so perhaps what’s more interesting here is the easier login process. …

SingTel has been told to pay an unprecedented S$180,000 fine for problems in its TV service that cut off the last dramatic minutes of last season’s Barclays Premier League for about a third of its pay-TV customers.

Some 115,000 households had missed out on the few extraordinary minutes on May 13, 2012, when two goals for Manchester City in their last game clinched the title in one of the most thrilling endings to a season.

…

  
(credit: StarHub)

Three years after he took over StarHub in a surprise move, company CEO Neil Montefiore will be retiring to make way for current chief operating officer, Tan Tong Hai, who takes over next month.

Montefiore took over from long-time StarHub CEO Terry Clontz in January 2010, in a high-profile move from rival M1. At M1, he had steered Singapore’s second mobile operator through the initial years of the country’s telecom liberalisation in the 1990s. …

If you don’t want the bundled mio TV or StarHub cable when you sign up for fibre broadband in Singapore, there’s a new online TV offering from upstart challenger Viewqwest this week – the popular PPTV online TV service from China.

Folks who sign up for Viewqwest’s Freedom VPN plan will get “VIP access” to the PPTV service, which streams thousands of popular Asian drama serials and some Hollywood movies. …

(source: Diary of A Singaporean Mind)

After enduring packed trains and sky-high prices for housing in the past few years, many Singaporeans just cannot imagine what life will be like when the government brings another 1.6 million people to the Tiny Red Dot by 2030.

What will be the place be like when 6.9 million people throng this place, up from the current 5.3 million? No matter how many roads or new MRT lines are built, there will still be a limit to the number of people who can be packed into a busy place like the central business district.

Perhaps it is time for companies and employees to seriously consider working from home, or just about anywhere, rather than having everyone squeeze like sardines into an MRT train to go to work at peak hour each day. …