What’s the next-gen broadband network all about? What can it do for me?

Those questions were topmost on the minds of some home owners who have so far rejected a free offer to hook up to Singapore’s ultra-fast fibre optic broadband network, according to the government agency in charge of rolling it out.

“Some people don’t even know what’s NBN (next-gen broadband network), they see the letter (of offer) and they throw the letter away,” said Assistant CEO for the Infocomm Development Authority, Khoong Hock Yun, at a media briefing here at CommunicAsia. …

Hard to log in. Keep getting disconnected.

If those problems have kept you from surfing the Web with Wireless@SG, you’ll be happy to hear that the free Wi-Fi hotspot service islandwide is now going to be a breeze to use.

With a new secure sign-on system announced today, you will only need to sign in once on your PC or phone and never have to do it again when you next visit a Wireless@SG hotspot. …

As you may have heard, some 95 per cent of Singapore is being wired up with fibre optic cables for the country’s next-generation broadband network, which promises an almost unlimited speed boost over existing SingTel’s copper-line phone system and StarHub’s HFC (hybrid fibre coaxial) network.

But little has been said about what this cable laying project means to the average Joe.

Earlier this week, OpenNet, the consortium tasked with wiring up Singapore, gave the media a glimpse of how things will pan out. The quick takeaway is that it is on-schedule, and will be sending letters to residents in selected areas to inform them that contractors would be coming to their homes to hook up the new cables. …

Singapore’s ultra high-speed broadband service, capable of offering speeds of 1Gbps, will go commercial as early as the first half of 2010, earlier than many observers have expected.

The country’s telecom regulator,the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), had just awarded the tender for the network’s OpCo (operating company) to StarHub months ago, and the NetCo contract to SingTel late last year.

However, the multi-billion dollar project seems to be picking up fast, with commercial services coming to some users in less than a year, according to Singapore’s Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Lui Tuck Yew, at the opening of the imbX show here. …

It’s official. There are more broadband connections in Singapore than there are households.

In January 2009, the household broadband penetration rate here reached 102.1 per cent, according to the latest figures from the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA). The government regulator usually releases these figures two months after they are collected.

Already third in the world ranking of household broadband penetration in Q2 2008, Singapore looks likely to go up the rankings released regularly by research group Point Topic.

I’ve been a broadband advocate ever since I first got my hands on a trial cable modem back in the late-1990s, so I’m glad more people are getting on the bandwagon.

However, I’d say this watershed, now that we’ve reached it, should mark the start of even more efforts to bring broadband to those who don’t have it.

…

As a letter writer in the ST Forum mentioned today, full number portability in Singapore does not mean you can switch from a post-paid to a pre-paid plan when you switch cellphone operators, and still keep your number.

It was pointed out that, number port exercises elsewhere, like in Hong Kong, allow for this to happen.

It’s interesting where this goes. Though the number of people switching from post-paid to pre-paid may not be as big (most pre-paid customers don’t really care to retain their numbers – they are more interested in call rates), you’d ask why this was not worked into the whole exercise.

Is it a technical problem or more based on what telcos think the market needs?

Expect IDA to come back with a reply, and hopefully, the portability could be extended to people switching from post-paid to pre-paid as well.

For now, one workaround, though a little troublesome, would be to switch from post-paid to pre-paid within the same telco, then later jump onto a new telco by doing a pre-paid to pre-paid port.

UPDATE: my suggested workaround doesn’t work, coz telcos do not even port post-paid to pre-paid lines. thanks for pointing it out, gabriel.