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. …

SingTel is going to lead a pilot project to explore ways to telecommute and have flexible work arrangements, with the hopes of drawing an estimated 326,000 “economically inactive” Singaporeans back into the workforce.

By sending a modest 30 employees from five companies back to their own homes, the study aims to assess the viability of telecommuting on a larger scale and identify the problems that may arise out of such a work culture. …

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. …

M1 is giving its cellphone customers three days of free local calls, messages and data services from February 10 to 12, as it tries to assuage users aggrieved by one of Singapore’s most serious mobile network outages.

Apologising to its customers, M1 said in a press statement this afternoon that it had restored 3G services fully in the affected areas by yesterday.  …

As thousands of M1 subscribers find themselves suddenly cut off from phone calls, SMSes and e-mail these past couple of days, it is hardly surprising to see many taking to Facebook to hit out at their telecom operator.

That the most serious outage in recent memory was caused by M1′s vendors somehow setting off a water sprinkler at a network centre makes it even harder to accept. As a friend who works in the industry remarked, this looked like a rather “noob” mistake.
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(Source: IDA)

Singapore’s cellphone operators have fallen short in providing outdoor 3G coverage, particularly in housing estates, at outdoor recreation areas and along train routes above ground, tests by the government regulator have found.

The Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) said today it will fine each operator $10,000, after signal readings around the island showed that they have failed to meet the 99 per cent coverage mandated from April this year.

In tests carried out in September, SingTel was found to offer 97.4 per cent coverage, while StarHub fared slightly worse with 97.2 per cent. The worst of the three was M1, which scored 94.6 per cent. …

SingTel is being fined S$300,000 for disruptions to its mio Voice home phone service late last year, as the infocomm regulator meted out the latest penalty to a telecom operator here for below-par services. …

The Infocomm Development Authority(IDA) of Singapore just released their forecast for IT trends in the next three to five years.

A review of key disruptive IT trends that will impact Singapore and the world, the Infocomm Technology Roadmap 2012 was written in conjunction with the industry, researchers and academics after a year of collaboration.

With the world undergoing rapid changes in demographics, urbanization and resource challenges, IT will have a huge part to play in mitigating and solving the problems of the future.

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Years after mobile payment was first mooted as a new way to pay for things, Singapore users will finally be able pay for taxi and train rides and shopping items by simply tapping their phones on any of the 30,000 retail points that already accept such the near-field communications (NFC) technology.

On Friday, a group of banks, transit companies and telecom operators here introduced a number of mobile applications that promise to make payment much easier.

The idea is to make the phone a digital wallet that contains the information on the credit cards and stored value cards you have now, which can be accessed when you tap it against a supported reader. …

Users in Singapore who have been asking when they can sign up for fibre broadband services may be happy to hear that more homes and offices will soon be connected or “turned on” for the speedy Internet services each month.

From next month, as many as 3,100 customers will be connected each month by Opennet, the contractor rolling out the fibre optic network throughout the island. Previously, it had only been obligated to connect 2,050, in its contract with the government, which funds part of the setup.

The quota was not enough, because service providers such as SingTel, StarHub and M1 were signing up more than 5,000 users at quarterly IT bazaars with attractive deals. This meant many users waited for weeks to get hooked up even though the fibre optic cable had been installed in their homes and offices.  …