When companies try to hide information about their products and services from consumers, it’s a black and white case: let’s hammer them to be more transparent.

Unfortunately, recent calls for Singapore’s telecom operators to declare an “average” surfing speed or “minimum guaranteed speed” are as misguided as they are unhelpful in solving the biggest problems users face here – a lack of content and inconsistent links to overseas sites. …

StarHub has just won the OpCo contract in Singapore’s next-generation national broadband network (NGNBN), a deal which will see it operate and manage the “active” infrastructure in the new network that promises speeds of 1Gbps in future.

The active infrastructure refers to stuff like switches and anything that is “manageable”, that is, anything other than the physical cables which are being laid by the NetCo (awarded to the OpenNet consortium of Axia NetMedia, SingTel, Singapore Press Holdings and SP Telecommunications).

Essentially, StarHub will be the go-between for RSPs (retail service providers) looking to offer ultra high-speed broadband and services like perhaps pay-TV in future over the new network. It will also be the one likely to be hooking up your terminators/modems to the fibre optic cables being laid to homes, schools and offices by the NetCo. …

The time is about 10 plus in the night, and my StarHub connection suddenly went down… first MSN, then my FTP, then Web browsing.

Reset the router, then the modem and realised that I’ve got an IP address from StarHub but things can’t move. Called StarHub and they were swamped by calls – an automated message just tells me to e-mail them and hung up.

Then my friend Albert told me it’s StarHub’s DNS servers being down. So I changed the “auto” DNS settings to point to another ISP’s DNS and things started moving again. That’s how I am blogging about this now.

Since I first noticed the problem, StarHub’s DNS servers have been up and down past few minutes. Share your experiences here if you got the same problems.

Update: It’s about 12 midnight now, and things appear back to normal.