The newly-opened up broadband market in Singapore has seen the entry of new players such as MyRepublic, which promises to cater to niche markets such as gamers with its differentiated fibre broadband offerings.

Just how do these smaller players get their game going and can they continue to prosper as the Big Three telcos in Singapore slash prices in an all-out fibre broadband war?

In this month’s Q&A, we speak to Malcolm Rodrigues, the CEO and co-founder of MyRepublic, the new kid on the block in the broadband market, for his views. …

After years of complaining about slow connections, Singapore’s broadband users can now join a study that uses their actual day-to-day experience to offer a clear snapshot of just how fast their Internet service is.

One of the long-standing problems here is that much of the content that users access is based overseas, and links to these sites seldom reach the advertised speeds, say, 100Mbps, that service providers promise. Now, instead of second-guessing or asking for advice from strangers in a forum, users can get a better sense of the actual speeds from real users’ feedback.

Some 900 volunteers are now sought to participate in a study conducted by well-known research firm SamKnows, which has carried out similar research in Europe and the United States. Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) is backing this survey in Singapore.

While the IDA has been publishing monthly throughput results based on its own tests, the new tests will have users collecting the information from their homes. This promises a more realistic look at how fast things are in the real world. …

Yet another service provider has come up with fibre broadband plans without the usual two-year lock-in period, in the latest sign of competition heating up in Singapore.

ViewQwest today said it would sell its high-end plans without having users sign a contract that ties them down. If they pay S$95.95 a month for a 200Mbps plan – or other more expensive plans – they can choose to switch to another telco any time they wish, according to a release the company sent out this afternoon.
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Consumers signing up for fibre broadband services in Singapore got one more alternative to the big three of SingTel, StarHub and M1 earlier this week, with the entry of MyRepublic, an upstart that promises to sell services based on what users do online, instead of  simply promising top speeds.

A S$69-a-month package, for example, will target gamers and offer a “low latency experience” for those who connect frequently to, say, the World of Warcraft servers worldwide to get their role-playing game fix.

The new service provider also offers online tutorials and exam preparation tools for Primary 1 to 6 as part of its S$89“Tutor” fibre broadband package, to attract parents who want their kids to go beyond the standard curriculum in school.  …