Singapore users who reject a free offer to wire up their homes to the country’s next-gen broadband network could end up waiting four months to install the fibre-optic cables, should they change their minds and want to surf on the ultra-fast services later.

That is, unless they get an alternative arrangement with a telecom operator, by agreeing to sign up to fibre broadband plans immediately, which then lets them jump queue and have the cables installed within three weeks.

This strange set of rules for such “ad hoc” installations, based on information from public hotline operators at network builder Opennet as well as Internet service providers here, reveal the confusion that a consumer could face when attempting to hook up to these ultra-fast connections.

The fibre optic network, offering speeds as fast as 1Gbps – or 10 times faster than older broadband services – has been deployed to more than 60 per cent of homes here, since home installations began in late 2009. However, it was only a year later, as services began to be offered commercially, that public interest warmed up.

Until then, with no services running through the new network, many home owners decided against an additional cable point in their apartments and landed properties because of the unsightly surface trunking that was usually involved.

Once they had rejected the free wiring offer from Opennet, which is partly funded by the Singapore government, home owners would have to pay S$220 (for apartments) or S$450 (for landed homes) to have the cables installed later.

Even if they do so now, the queue is as long as four months, as an Opennet hotline operator told Techgoondu. Better yet, it takes five working days to schedule a date and for the company to call back – we called on Saturday and are yet to hear back from Opennet.

However, if one is to press further, Opennet would “recommend” that you ask a telco like SingTel to set up the fibre optic cables for you – at a shortened waiting time of about three weeks.

That cannot be right, since only Opennet is authorised to lay any such cable into your home. This separation of roles by the authorities is meant to prevent one company from dominating the market. SingTel later also verified that it would only facilitate the installation, which would be done by Opennet.

So, why have two different queues? It sounds logical, on one hand, since this means those who really want the service now can have it sooner than someone who just wants to install the cable to wait and see.

On the other hand, the situation is confusing to consumers because there seems to be two sets of rules, one of which only presenting itself if you ask the right questions to the right people (your telco, not Opennet, which will put you at the end of the queue).

Can this information not be made public – spurring more people to sign up – rather than through “ad hoc” advice and sometimes downright erroneous information given through the Opennet hotline? Imagine how many people would have been turned away in disappointment when told that they had to wait four months to get their fibre set up.

At the same time, while it balances the need to rush out the network by end-2012, Opennet has to consider the wish for folks who have declined the installation earlier to want to sign up now. Until late last year, no services were in sight and it is understandable that many house-proud Singaporeans did not want ugly trunking running through their homes.

Sure, they then have to pay the penalty since they chose to run the cables after their district had been scheduled for the exercise. But shouldn’t the monetary penalty or cost be enough, such that they don’t get penalised again with a long wait when trying to sign up later? After all, the network has to be used to be useful – completing it without that many users on it means little.

This is one of those things that you feel Opennet can do better in, even as it rushes to complete the network on time.

To be fair, it has done much better than the players in Singapore’s last broadband push – SingaporeONE, for those who remember the 1990s – when there was little information on the benefits of technologies like ADSL and cable modem and takeup was extremely slow as a result.

But there is more that Opennet can do and that is to make it easier for people to sign up. It can start by telling people that, yes, you can get ahead in the queue if you want to get online immediately.

And looking at the queue for installations, it appears that a lot more people want to set up fibre at home than Opennet can cope at the moment. Perhaps it’s also time to hire more contractors for the job, rather than making them wait for four months?

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.

Here are some things you, the home owner and tech goondu, should be aware of.

1. It’s just the cable, stupid
First, to clarify things, what OpenNet (the “NetCo” in this broadband project) is doing is simply laying the fibre optic cable to your home, much like StarHub did with its cable TV network more than a decade ago. The difference this time: another company called the “OpCo” – Nucleus Connect – will have to “light up” the cables or basically enable the cables to do what they are supposed to do. More on this later.

Some lucky folks will get commercial services as early as the first half of next year, according to the Singapore authorities. But for now, the excitement will be confined to seeing a group of contractors come to install a new cable, which will be inactive for a while until another bunch of folks come to hook up additional gear to “light it up”.

When the OpenNet folks – look out for them in purple polo shirts – come knocking, they will bring the fibre optic cable inside your home and hook this up to a wall socket of sorts. Just think of it as another cable point next to your phone and cable TV sockets. This installation is free for most people – the exception being those who live in a big bungalow that requires more than 15 metres of fibre optic cables to wire up.

Just like StarHub’s cable TV rollout, this free offer to wire up is for one-time only. Should you reject it, you will have to pay S$220 or more when you change your mind later, after seeing your neighbour download his pirated movies 10 times faster than you.

2. Things might not be pretty
Singapore is such a beautiful city because most of its cables are hidden underground and this continues to be the case for the next-generation broadband network.

At Cantonment Drive, where the first flats are being wired up, OpenNet showed reporters how it will be using underground ducts provided by SingTel (one of its shareholders) to run cables all over Singapore – and all the way to the foot of your high-rise HDB flat – without having to dig up any ground.

From here, the fibre optic cables run up a riser and exits on every floor through the common corridor – think of the riser as a lift shaft for cables.

Up to here, the cables are still well-concealed. But this is where the difficulty begins. In some HDB blocks with ceilings that conceal existing wiring, like the Cantonment Drive flat that we were brought to, the new fibre optic cables have to be run along the corridor with rather ugly white plastic trunking. The trunking’s okay for one apartment, but when several apartments are hooked up with the trunking on each floor, it stands out.

To be honest, this is still ways neater than the bare wires you see hanging overhead in some other cities. But being the house-proud people that Singaporeans are, some residents will surely complain.

The irony is, if your estate is older (say, over 10 years old), OpenNet says you should already have some sort of ugly plastic trunking for existing cables. In this case, the new cables can just fit in there without making your corridor any uglier!

The same applies for running the cable inside your home as well. If you already have ugly plastic trunking all over your walls, then the contractor only needs to open up the trunking and stuff the new cable inside.

Unfortunately, if your apartment is less than five years old, you may already have cable points, phone sockets and network points nicely concealed and flushed against a wall. Now, you have to decide if you want ugly white trunking running across your living room.

When I put this to the folks from OpenNet and IDA (the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore), they said it was sometimes possible to squeeze the very thin fibre optic cables through existing concealed trunking.

On your common corridor, this means it can run inside the ceiling with the rest of the phone and StarHub cables. Similarly, if your home is hooked up with cables hidden inside the walls, OpenNet says there is a way to slip the new cable into the existing concealed trunking and have it exit through your existing phone or cable point.

The cable layers say this is done with a technique that uses “low-friction” cables that be slid through already tight trunking. But even they admit that this technique doesn’t work all the time, as was the case with the Cantonment Drive flats, so you just have to keep your fingers crossed.

3. Having more gear
Once the OpenNet guys are done with the cabling, you’ll need an OpCo (so far, there’s only one – the StarHub-owned Nucleus Connect) to come and hook up what is called an ONT (Optical Network Terminal).

This is like an additional modem of sorts, to the layman, as it will hook up the fibre optic cable from your new wall jack to your home network.

This ONT will come with several ports (IDA’s sample had four), which will allow several RSPs (retail service providers) like StarHub, SingTel and whoever wants to sell ultra-fast broadband here to hook up their set-top boxes or modems. Yes, one more modem compared to now.

So, if you have a cable/ADSL modem and a router now, in future, you’ll have an ONT plus a modem plus a router. And for now, I’m still not sure if you’ll connect an HDTV set-top box to an ONT or to an RSP’s modem.

To be fair, all of this is still new. Thus, there are bound to be some teething pains, some of which will be borne by early adopters.

Just as the first ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) users in Singapore in the 1990s were basically crash-test dummies for the bug-ridden SingTel Magix and its equipment vendor Alcatel, there will be goondus like me who will clamour to be the first on fibre and help service providers sort out the bugs!

I only hope there is a sustained test period – as StarHub did with its years-long cable modem trial before the commercial rollout – to iron out the bugs before unleashing FTTH (fibre-to-the-home) services on a hopeful public. What we don’t need is SingTel Magix redux.

UPDATE: IDA has set up a small site showing people what to expect with the FTTH rollout. Unfortunately, I don’t know why it still envisions slow powerline and phone line networking for your internal home network – these will become bottlenecks for an ultra-fast network promising 1Gbps.

I’ll have more about Singapore’s next-gen broadband rollout in an upcoming issue of Digital Life, which comes free on Wednesdays with The Straits Times.

This means you have to have your house or apartment wired up with these new cables. You can check here by typing in your postal code at the website of Opennet, the company tasked with rolling it out.

Don’t go to the www.opennet.com.sg URL that the official press releases point you to, because the opening page has problems loading on many browsers. Go instead to rollout.opennet.com.sg.

Well, I checked my place in Upper Serangoon and I should have fibre installed as early as Oct 2009. Hooray!

UPDATE: The rollout date is only for laying the fibre optic cable to your home, the Opennet folks have clarified at a press conference here. Nucleus Connect, the OpCo, will “light up” the fibre optics” and enable a broadband service later. I sense some confusion coming along…

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.

To do its job, StarHub will have to start a new wholly-owned subsidiary, called Nucleus Connect. This is because the builders of the new network – both the NetCo and OpCo – are not supposed to be “in bed” with retail service providers, which StarHub will continue to be.

It’s not as strict a rule as for SingTel, for example, which is allowed to only own up to 30 per cent of the NetCo, even though it is providing most of the infrastructure (thus the other consortium members). That’s because the government regulator, the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), has always viewed SingTel as a dominant player that could derail its efforts to use the NGNBN to foster more competition.

What should you make of this announcement?

Firstly, no surprises that StarHub has won the OpCo deal. This was the “consolation prize” after it failed in its bid, as part of a consortium that once contained the promising Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN), to grab the NetCo contract. For its efforts, Nucleus Connect will spend S$1 billion on the active infrastructure over 25 years, with IDA granting up to S$250 million of the costs.

But the bigger question is: what does this do for competition? It’s a mixed bag and a bit hard to call now.

The whole idea of restructuring the market around a NetCo and OpCo is to separate the operators of different parts of the network, so that no one telco controls everything. This way, they will wholesale and resell parts of the infrastructure at open, pre-determined prices.

It’s a bold move – short of breaking up SingTel like how UK regulators have broken up BT into wholesale and retail components – to ensure competition in an industry that spawns natural monopolies.

Yet, there are problems. It is clear that IDA wants to break up the duopoly of SingTel and StarHub, which together own most of the pipes underneath the ground here, with this exercise. But yet, the two telcos have now ended up as the dominant powers at the end of the bidding exercise.

Sure, you can say SingTel now owns only 30 per cent of the NetCo, and thus the infrastructure. When the new network is up, it will have offered access – via the NetCo – to most of the cables it now owns to other operators at open prices. And yes, you can say StarHub too will have its powers diminished after this, since it is not supposed to get a preferential price from the new OpCo.

But is there something more that IDA could have done? You’d wish, as an observer, a foreign wildcard like HKBN, would have thrown a spanner in the works for competition’s sake. Now that it’s out of the game, and we are back to SingTel and StarHub, the feeling is, inevitably, a bit deja vu.

I’m hoping the business community doesn’t feel this way. MobileOne and Pacific Internet, for example, should take this chance to innovate and compete on services. They’ve cried foul in the past about SingTel leveraging on its fixed line network, so here’s a chance for them to get even.

The other challenge I see for IDA is content. Even if we accept that the infrastructure is “open” now and prices regulated, how do you prevent one service provider from banking on exclusive pay-TV content – yes, I’m thinking of the Barclays Premier League (BPL) – to kill off smaller service providers who cannot pay the hundreds of millions of dollars for the broadcast rights?

If, say, SingTel or StarHub is allowed to offer its broadband customers discounts when they buy BPL programmes from them, how do smaller service providers compete?

Currently, there are no rules to prevent that, because the IDA is not in charge of content. The Media Development Authority (MDA), which has so far taken a hands-off approach, will have to look harder at things at a more macro scale.

Indeed, people need to ask why there is one regulator for telecoms, and another for pay-TV, when telcos are using one profitable service (mobile or broadband) to bankroll their dominance in another (exclusive pay-TV content).

So far, we’ve seen nothing done by either agency that properly regulates this cross-bundling. And users have paid the price for this undesirable type of competition – in higher BPL pay-TV prices and the trouble to get two set-top boxes if they want to watch both Champions League matches (on SingTel) and BPL programmes (on StarHub).

It’s been known for years that telco firms are morphing into media companies. So, why aren’t the rules clearer to allow for the right kind of competition that brings better value to people? Without rules to curb cross-bundling, the NGNBN will only solve one part of the problem – and be bogged down by another.

Another round of BPL bidding is up this year, as StarHub’s three-year term comes up. It’s something for government regulators to think about, before the network even reaches its target of covering half of Singapore by 2012, and some 95 per cent of the island by 2015.

(update: The last two targets were originally set by IDA. OpenNet, in winning the NetCo bid, had said it would complete nationwide rollout by 2012)