Cellphone users in Singapore can expect extended coverage in buildings, on roads and when travelling in an MRT train underground, when stricter rules on 3G coverage unveiled today by the government regulator kick in as soon as April 2012.

Following a number of high-profile network outages last year, the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) today spelt out the new rules, which will include 85 per cent coverage for each building here. Currently, telcos only have to cover 85 per cent of “public access areas”.

For commuters, the coverage will now include all road and MRT tunnels as well as the CTE by 2015, extending from the previous requirement of 95 per cent across road and MRT tunnels tested. In all, about 99 per cent of the outdoor space on the island is to be blanketed by 3G signals. Previously, the requirement was only 95 per cent across all roads.

And each time any of the three telecom operators here – SingTel, StarHub, M1 – fails to meet one requirement, they can be fined up to S$50,000, instead of the previous “slap on the wrist” S$5,000 per indicator per month.

Immediately, telcos are expected to react by setting up more equipment in the additional areas they have to cover. They might also check their existing 3G coverage by going to popular locations, like shopping malls, to test out the experience.

But it remains to be seen if the tougher rules will solve a bigger problem – the quality of service expected by users, even as more of them start logging on with smartphones and clog up networks with minute-by-minute Facebook updates.

Already, SingTel has proactively listed “typical” broadband speeds on its 3G mobile data plans and promised a “priority” lane for customers who pay more for high-tier plans. But there is still no “guarantee” of what a user can get, because the experience on the go is ultimately still determined by the number of users in an area – think of Suntec City and the hordes of people there during a computer bazaar, for example.

Still, the new rules will mean that telcos would have to prevent a repeat of the outages that M1 and SingTel users suffered last year.  They should also push telcos to fix another problem – this dumping of users back on 2G at places which are expected to offer 3G speeds.

Know a place that consistently doesn’t offer 3G data? Share in the comments!

Singapore Expo is a long way away for most people, other than folks living in the east, so before you head down to Sitex, Singapore’s last quarterly IT bazaar for 2011, check out some of the standout deals that people have been putting up on brochure sites.

Yes, in the past, you had to squeeze your way through the halls for some small bargain, collecting loads of brochures on the way. Today, you can check out what’s on offer online before heading down for a more targeted trip.

Here are some great deals so far at this weekend’s show. We’ll update this page as we get more info.

D-Link’s DIR-825 router and DNS-320 network attached storage (NAS)

These are some of the best bang for buck gear that you can hook up your home with if you are looking for both high performance and value for money.

A great router for homes, the DIR-825 (S$129) supports dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) Wi-Fi and comes with four gigabit ports that are necessary for today’s fast PCs and large file transfers. Not too long ago, similar routers cost a whole lot more, likely closer to or more than S$200.

The DNS-320 is another favourite NAS of home networking buffs because it’s not only good looking but also extremely speedy and feature-packed. Supporting two hard disks, it even lets you convert the backup device from a non-RAID to RAID 1 configuration easily, so you can mirror your hard disk content for safer backups.

Needless to say, it also comes with a bit-torrent client that you can use to download to your heart’s content, especially with that S$39-a-month M1 fibre plan offering 100Mbps to homes. At S$109, the DNS-320 is a definitely worth checking out for folks looking to set up their own NAS for the first time.

>> Download the brochure.

Pay S$48 for an Apple Magic Trackpad and memory upgrade with an Apple iMac

Buy an iMac at nubox’s stand, one of several offering Mac computers at the show, and you can pay just S$48 for a double memory upgrade (usually from 4GB to 8GB) and have an Apple Magic Trackpad to add to the style of your Apple computer.

The offer goes with several models of the iMac, from the entry level 2.5GHz version with a Core i5 chip and 21.5-inch screen costing S$1,648 to the top-end S$2,748 version with a 3.1GHz Core i5 chip and 27-inch screen.

Also noteworthy to folks opting to run Windows on a Mac: Parallels Desktop 6 and Windows Home Premium (OEM) are being bundled at S$238 (usual S$298). The package of software lets you run your Windows programs right on your Mac desktop as if they are Mac programs.

>> Download the brochures.

Print anywhere with an HP printer
Printers are a mainstay at each IT show in Singapore and this Sitex expo is no different. One interesting all-in-one machine worth checking out is HP’s Photosmart Premium Fax e-All-in-One, which lets you print remotely using the Internet. It also comes with all the useful features expected these days, like Wi-Fi support, so you can share the printer at home easily without worrying about wires.

The S$369 printer is going for S$299 at Sitex, so it may be worth checking out.

>> Download the brochures.

Buy Microsoft Office, get a wireless mouse free
This is the type of deal that will be welcome news to new PC or laptop owners. Microsoft is dangling a free Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000 (usually S$39.90) as part of a deal with its Office 2010 productivity software, which will be nice to install on a new PC.

The Office packages you can buy at the Microsoft booth include Office Home & Student Edition 2010, which costs S$199, and the Office Home & Business Edition 2010 which retails for S$298.

>> Download the brochures.

Nokia N9 at S$98 at StarHub

Nokia’s neat-looking N9 is going for a nice S$98 at StarHub’s booth, along with other Android favourites now like the Samsung Galaxy S II (S$218), HTC Sensation XE (S$198) and Motorola Razr (S$48), if you sign up with a high-end mobile plan.

Worth queuing up? Well, if you plan to spend a day at Singapore Expo anyway, no harm doing so!

>> Download the brochures.

Share with us other great Sitex deals you have spotted in the comments here!

Couch potatoes in Singapore will find it easier to switch pay-TV operators come March 2012, when new rules unveiled today kick in to prevent operators from locking in users with long-term or punitive subscription plans.

The media authorities said today that operators would no longer be allowed to lock in consumers with subscription contracts longer than two years.

While they still have to pay for terminating a subscription early, this payment will be based on the length of time left on the contract, on a month by month basis, and subject to the discounts they received at sign-up.

Currently, users often end up paying the full amount for terminating a subscription, which varies in the hundreds of dollars, even if they are in the final month of the contract.

Though the new rules revealed by the Media Development Authority (MDA) will not encourage viewers to switch overnight, they will find it much easier to do so next year, when it becomes clearer which pay-TV operator, or operators, will be showing live Barclays Premier League football on the telly.

Rights to the hottest TV content here go up for bidding again next year and the two biggest operators – SingTel and StarHub – could end up both broadcasting the matches should a content sharing deal be struck, like the one for the World Cup last year.

With less onerous contracts tying them down, viewers will be much freer to switch to any one operator, no matter which one wins the rights to the live football screenings.

Certainly, that seems to be the goal for the MDA, which said today that pay-TV viewership has grown from 490,000 in December 2006 to more than 857,000 today.

Consumers already enjoy the same rights when it comes to mobile or broadband contracts, thanks to similar rules pushed through separately by the infocomm authorities in March 2010.

The new rules for pay-TV will spell things out even more clearly for telcos, since they often bundle pay-TV services along with mobile, broadband and home telephone services in what are termed quadruple-play packages.

SingTel and StarHub are the two main pay-TV players in Singapore, while M1 also sells a limited package of programmes as part of its broadband offering.

Think of Singapore’s latest efforts to turn everyone’s phone into a mobile wallet to pay for taxi rides, burgers and groceries, and the phrase deja vu may not be far from your mind.

As the city-state’s infocomm regulator and its industry partners embark on an ambitious S$40 million project, unveiled today, to let mobile phone users here tap and pay with their phones at some 20,000 payment points by next year, they could perhaps remember a lesson or two from the past.

If they succeed, users will be able to trot out their smartphones to pay for a burger at McDonald’s instead of using an ez-link card by mid-2012. A year later, in 2013, commuters may also be able to tap their phones at train station gantries to pay for their rides – if the transport authorities and companies get their act together.

But Singapore has seen numerous such trials over the years, even as places like Japan and Hong Kong have raced ahead with more advanced payment options.

Early in the last decade, publicly-funded projects here had users adding a specialised cover to a Nokia phone to pay for a cuppa wirelessly. Then trials a few years ago, in 2007, let users tap specialised phones – concept devices that are butt ugly – to pay for anything from a burger at McDonald’s to a train ride.

I tested that technology when I was a reporter at The Straits Times, and the gadgetry works, I can tell you. But one thing I remember from that experience was the strange looks that the SMRT auntie at the train station gave me when I said I wanted to top up the stored value on my phone, and how the cashier at McDonald’s wondered if I was trying to be a punk to tap my phone on the reader at his counter.

As valid as it was then, consumer acceptance is one important factor to get right today. Why, asked a friend today when I told him about this new payment option, would he need a phone to pay for things if he already had his credit card and ez-link card with him always?

For a mobile wallet to take off, users have to be convinced that their mobile devices are, first of all, secure, and easy to use as well. To answer my friend, a phone lets one see how much stored value he has left, which a passive card cannot. If you lose your phone, you can call up your bank to cancel it, just as you would if you lost your credit card today.

The good news is that, these days, people are more accepting when it comes to using the phone for payment and transactions. Reporters were told today that 330,000 people have downloaded the DBS mobile banking app onto their phones, which lets them check their balances, transfer funds and carry out other transactions on the go.

It helps too that the technology has improved. Near-field communications (NFC), the wireless technology that lets your phone interact with a cash register, a poster or just about anything with a wireless chip inside, was a work in progress in the past, but not now.

Another plus: credit cards and stored value cards like the ez-link card used for transit in Singapore now come with this contactless NFC feature, and thousands of merchants here already use compatible terminals that support this form of tap-and-go payment, which can be used for future NFC-compatible phones as well.

In the past, retailers’ unhappiness with adding an additional contactless terminal – next to their NETS and other terminals – was one factor preventing more merchants, and thus consumers, from taking up such mobile payment options. That barrier is less of factor now.

Then there is the ambitious plan unveiled today by the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) – the last bit of the puzzle, it hopes. This national payment infrastructure will let banks, merchants, telcos and other interested companies connect to the technology easily, instead of having them negotiate individual agreements.

A consortium of seven companies – DBS Bank, Citibank, payment operator EZ-Link, technology vendor Gemalto and the three telcos here – were awarded the contract to run this new project today, which means this is not a project like past projects, where the telcos each ran their own trials separately with their own payment partners. The latest endeavour is more organised and less of a Wild Wild West effort.

So, what’s in the way then? The most obvious is the lack of handsets supporting the tap-and-go technology.

In Apple-mad Singapore, neither the current iPhone 4 nor the upcoming iPhone 4S launching this week here comes with NFC out of the box. Samsung, another popular phone maker in Singapore, has also chosen to ship some of its high-end phones here without NFC built in, presumably because there does not seem to be enough demand for it.

This means most users here would have to resort to snapping on add-on jackets with the wireless chip embedded inside – a deal breaker especially for phone-proud Singapore users, unless this jacket is so pretty and attractive and costs little or nothing. Even so, this add-on may not give them all the functions, for example, like checking their stored value balance.

The other thing that Singapore absolutely has to get right is for the transit operators to be fully involved. If users are to start acquiring a habit of paying with their phones, they probably should start by paying for their trips every day. This is pretty much the same way ez-link cards have extended their usage from train stations to eateries near these stations and later to other outlets beyond, like printing shops and cafes, for example.

What the transport authorities and the companies they regulate have to get right is to avoid charging a hefty fee for phone makers and other technology partners to certify their devices to be ready for payment.

SingTel’s vice president for consumer products, Chan Yim Leng, said as much at today’s event, when she urged transport players not to impose overly expensive fees for certification, which will turn away handset makers if they find it not worth the cost to sell phone models with wireless chips inside.

She estimates that the wireless payment technology will take off here when the transit operators come onboard in 2013, hopefully when more phones with the supporting chip inside are on sale here.

But it’s telling that nobody at today’s event has a concrete answer to the number of devices that will ship in Singapore and support this tap and pay service, say, by next year.

In Japan, one of the few places where osaifu keitai, or wallet phones, have taken off, the technology has been helped by the country’s unique, closed market. There, a telco like NTT DoCoMo could tell handset makers to develop phones that support mobile wallet chips and software, so that services can be developed quickly and effectively.

In Tokyo, I could turn up at a karaoke chain outlet like Big Echo, tap my phone at a reader and my favourite songs would automatically come on screen. In Singapore, unfortunately, the rollout of the technology is at the mercy of worldwide trends, which companies in this small market find hard to shape.

There are some good signs, to be fair. A rejuvenated Nokia, a long-time proponent of NFC, might help get more compatible phones like the well-made N9 into the pockets of users here. Similarly, Blackberry is another phone maker keen to have NFC in its phones.

These chips, after all, can do a lot more than just payment. If you see a cinema poster, reporters were told today, you can tap your phone on it and be presented with a website of show times and payment options. You can later turn up at the cinema, tap your phone on a terminal to receive your tickets virtually. When your friend shows up, you may even put your phones together for you to send one virtual ticket to his phone.

Cool? Yes. In the future, for sure. The question is how long more users really have to wait, because the technology’s promises have been making their rounds for a while now. Even in tech-savvy Singapore, and despite improvements of late, proponents of these newfangled mobile wallets still have a lot of convincing to do in the coming months.

Flat-rate fees for surfing the Web on the phone in Europe could be something on the cards for StarHub users after the telco and its regional telecom partners signed a deal with one of the world’s biggest cellphone operators, Vodafone, today.

The Conexus Mobile Alliance, a grouping of Asian telecom operators that StarHub is part of, said it would work with Vodafone to provide more streamlined services to multi-national corporations and offer “harmonised roaming rates across multiple countries” for a combined 600 million subscribers in Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacific.

Though the agreement falls short of declaring a standard fee across the dozens of countries, Techgoondu understands that it is something that the telcos are working towards, when the agreement comes into effect from January 1, 2012. Prices are expected to be released then.

Currently, Singapore’s StarHub users pay a maximum of S$15 a day when they log on overseas to one of its Conexus telco partners’ networks to surf the Web on their phones. These partners are FarEasTone (Taiwan), Hutchison Telecom (Hong Kong), NTT DoCoMo (Japan), Smart (the Philippines) and TrueMove (Thailand).

If these telcos eventually agree a common roaming rate with Vodafone, frequent travellers would hope that the same flat rates could be extended to Europe, where Vodafone has a footprint in a number of countries, like Britain and Germany, as well as Australia, New Zealand and Africa, where it owns a majority of shares in several telcos.

That would mean no more bill shocks, which can come up to hundreds or thousands of dollars when users unwittingly download mail or surf the Web on their smartphones with pay-as-you-use roaming services.

In terms of the countries covered, such a deal would also put the telcos in the alliance ahead of rival regional networks that SingTel and M1 are part of. The Bridge Alliance and Asia Mobility Initiative currently offer flat-rate fees only with partner networks in Asia.

Vodafone still has a long-standing partnership with M1 – a deal signed several years ago when current StarHub CEO Neil Montefiore was at the helm at M1. However, the M1 deal does not offer any flat-rate roaming fees when M1 users log on to most of Vodafone’s vast global network, other than in places like Hong Kong.

That agreement would not be renewed when it expires at the end of this year, said Paul-Gerhard Itjeshorst, acting CEO of Vodafone partner markets today. He added that Vodafone had partnered Conexus because it had a “large footprint.”

Another one of Singapore’s quarterly tech bazaars, Comex 2011, opens its doors today to thousands of bargain hunters eager to cash in on discounts – or perceived discounts – on laptops, headphones, printers, TVs, broadband plans and just about anything tech you can find on the island.

One of the most hotly-awaited deals – HP’s TouchPad – has already been sold out this morning. Only 100 units of each version of the tablet (16GB and 32GB) went on sale today and the queue numbers were snapped up in no time. A queue had formed as early as 4am, according to the good folks from The Straits Times Digital Life.

HP is still selling the tablet from S$118 in the coming days, but you’d have to love queues to get in line for one of these fire sale items.

Meanwhile, here are a few other deals we’d be interested with:

1. HP’s Officejet 6500A all-in-one at S$299
Down from the usual S$399, this inkjet-based AIO machine will fit well with home and small businesses which don’t need the crispness of laser and prefer perhaps a bit of colour printing on occasions. Like its bigger brother, the Officejet Pro 8500A ($499), this AIO can connect via Wi-Fi and offers two-sided printing.

Download the HP flyers here.

2. Free Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 with broadband signup
StarHub is giving away a spanking new tablet from Samsung if you sign up for its 50Mbps fibre plan at about S$80 a month. Yeah, we know you are paying more each month for your subscription, but hey, if you don’t wish to pony up S$848 for the 16GB 3G version of the hottest Android tablet now, there’s always this option!

Download StarHub’s flyers here.

3. Seagate external hard disks
The usual hard disk fest continues at Comex 2011. We know you’d buy something you don’t need – and when there’s nothing to buy, people seem to just buy a fancy red external drive just for fun. Here’s what Seagate is offering.

Download Seagate’s flyers here.

4. HP Envy 14 comes with free printer
Buy a S$2,499 Envy 14 laptop – a great rival to the Macbook Pro in our eyes – and get a free Nikon S1000PJ 12-meg camera, an HP Deskjet 1000 all-in-one printer and Trend Micro anti-virus for free. A good deal for a laptop that usually goes for the same price – without the freebies.

If the Envy is not your cup of tea, check out the ProBooks and EliteBooks from HP. Much nicer designs than previous HP units and definitely better built than the consumer Pavilion range, they are worth checking out.

Download the HP PC flyers here.

We’ll be updating with more deals as the show goes on in the next few days!

No, not by choosing a mate from a dog breeder, but through following his story on TV, playing games on your mobile phone, and finding hints on Facebook.

It’s a virtual love story that StarHub, who is running Singapore’s first interactive commercial, hopes will create lots of brand publicity for them. The commercial was unveiled on the big screen at a media preview held at GV Vivocity cinemas today.

The catch is that it doesn’t only play out on TV, YouTube or the cinema screen, but also on mobile phones and computers through interactive gaming — the first time it is done here locally. It’s not exactly a full-blown alternate reality game (ARG), but it contains some elements of it.

How it is works is that viewers first download StarHub’s free Hub IT! app for iPhones and Androids. Whenever StarHub’s “Love Tail” advertisement runs, they simply fire up the app, and point their phone’s camera at the screen.

The Fetch-A-Reward app function will use visual and sound cues to detect if this Starhub commercial is running. If it is, it unlocks certain games on the app that viewers can play.

For example, at the preview where I was at, the game unlocked was a cute 2D sidescrolling platformer, where digitized Sparky had to fight fires by peeing on them.

The whole purpose of jumping through all these hoops? Besides the intrinsic fun, StarHub is giving away a prize pool that includes S$10,000 and goodies like an Apple Macbook Air, iPad2, and Samsung 3D TV to dedicated viewers who follow the unfolding story and unlock achievements.

Social media also has a part to play in this interactive commercial, where StarHub will release tips on how to progress via their Facebook channel, and the whole campaign runs for 16 days from 26th August to 10th September.

Besides this, StarHub will also offer instant rewards like GV movie vouchers and StarHub store credits when people snap QR codes of their print ads, which will be scattered across 600 bus stop shelters island-wide.

Reinforcing Starhub as top Hubbing telco

StarHub’s head of sales and marketing, Mr Ng Long Shyang, said that this branding campaign hopes to reinforce StarHub’s strength in their triple-play bundling of mobile, broadband and pay-TV, which they popularized in Singapore as “hubbing”.

As the interactive commercial uses all platforms, it’s a good branding showcase and shows StarHub’s strengths as the “original hubbing company” versus “wannabe hubbing companies”, said Long Shyang.

They hope to get at least 30,000 to 40,000 fans who will follow Sparky’s story.

StarHub declined to reveal the cost of the project that took two-and-a-half months to put together, but said that “it is within our normal advertising spend”, as they explore beyond print advertising to other mediums.

UNWIRED, Singapore’s first and only independent wireless and mobile conference, returned for a second run last Thursday, and saw the attendance of top-level executives from the relevant industries from across Southeast Asia.

Opened by the Infocomm Development Authority’s assistance chief executive Khoong Hock Yun, it featured half a day’s discussion on hot topics affecting the industry and its users.

From Singapore’s expected move to next generation mobile broadband (4G/LTE) to the rise of mobile computing and winning features of a mobile operating system, the conference was packed with fresh insights from a who’s who list of the country’s industry experts, who fielded a number of questions from the audience.

Of particular interest was the first panel, which starred Chan Kin Hung (head of products and solutions at Starhub), Chan Yim Leng (vice-president for consumer products at SingTel), Raymond Tan (former CEO of Berca Global Access), and Remus Tan (director of mobile networks from Tellabs). The discussion centered on the upcoming 4^th generation of cellular wireless standards, and their rollout in Singapore.

Some telcos, for instance in the US, have branded their networks as 4G, but there is currently no system which meets the 4G standards set by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), although there are viable candidates. True 4G standards will be able to deliver all content, from voice to multimedia, over IP and provide a completely different user experience.

SingTel and Starhub are already conducting LTE technical trials, but the key driver, according to StarHub’s Chan Kin Hung, is devices that support LTE. SingTel’s Chan Yim Leng also cited the importance of establishing a regulatory environment as an important factor to get things going. The idea is thus for telcos to jointly roll out LTE with manufacturers and governments.

What about WiMAX, a competing wireless standard to LTE? According to Raymond Tan, the issue in many developing countries like Indonesia, where “outside of big cities, the closest thing to mobile broadband is GPRS”, is not speed, but stable throughput. WiMAX cannot provide spectacular speeds, but it can deliver stable rates of 1 to 2 Mbps, he said. Both telco panelists expressed that Singapore has no use of WiMAX, and that 3G is a more suitable standard locally.

The conference then moved on to the rise of mobile computing with a second panel made up of hardware makers. Spiros Nikolakopoulos, Motorola’s vice-president for mobile devices for Asia, called the new trend “converged computing”. Indeed, the rise of tablet devices has many people using computers when many have not even owned a desktop in their lives, he noted.

Moving forward, it is agreed that two largest issues facing mobile computing the battery life of devices and consumer education in the devices’ usage. As of today, most smartphones can barely last a day in usage. Consumers will also benefit from tips on how to get the most out of their new toys.

What will a winning mobile OS look like in the future? That was the topic for the last panel. Less than a year ago, iOS was the dominant mobile OS; now that crown belongs to Android.

If Marc Hopstein, Microsoft’s lead for Windows Mobile, APAC, is to be believed, people-centric communication and the ability to build an ecosystem around the OS are important.

But to a hardware manufacturer like Samsung, “building brand loyalty, regardless of platform” is the most important factor, said Winston Goh, product marketing manager of Samsung Asia. Customers must identify with the brand and stick with it even if they decide to jump platforms, and this is something hardware manufacturers must work towards.

The day culminated in a networking session at the hotel bar, with the first round bought by one of UNWIRED’s main sponsors Tellabs. (Never say no to free beer!) It was enlightening to listen to speakers who would not otherwise talk about what their companies are up to and what’s next for the industry.

See you next year!

If you’ve been lusting over the smooth, curved Gorilla Glass screen and sleek exterior of the Dell Venue smartphone, it’s here finally. The Android 2.2 smartphone – which feels a bit 2010, to be honest – has hit stores here in Singapore with a recommended retail price of S$738. The phone will also be available through telcos StarHub and M1.

The Venue sports a 4.1-inch AMOLED display (800 x 480) under a smooth and durable Gorilla Glass display which is slightly curved down towards the side to improve typing ergonomics. Speaking of typing, the Venue also comes with the Swype keyboard pre-installed, which should significantly speed up text input after some practice.

The 8-megapixel camera with LED flash and 4x digital zoom make it a great on-the-go shooter and you can quickly touch up photos and videos with Dell’s pre-loaded editing software. The Venue can also be a productivity companion, with support for a full range of e-mail services, including Microsoft ActiveSync. An office suite is also available for viewing and editing documents on the go.

Dell has layered a skin on top of Android, which they call “Stage UI”. If you’ve seen the Dell Streak before, this should be familiar. From my past experience, Stage is a nice little addition on top of stock Android; it doesn’t alter the UI drastically, like HTC’s Sense, yet still manages to add some small improvements to overall usability. For those of you who adamantly prefer the stock Android UI, Stage shouldn’t upset you too much.

Now, Dell, where’s that Venue Pro we’re all waiting for?

What features would users expect from the mobile OSes running their handheld gizmos in the next six to 12 months? What will LTE and 4G bring to telecom operators when the speedy networks are finally rolled out? And how can organisations gain by creating mobile apps that tap on “the cloud” through their smartphones?

These are just a sample of the issues that industry leaders from Singapore and the region will be discussing at the upcoming UNWIRED 2011 conference on May 26, 2011.

In its second year, the event brings together the who’s who of the industry to identify issues facing the mobile and telecoms sectors as well as to find strategies for growth in the upcoming months and years. (click here for last year’s conference)

Opening the event this year is the assistant chief executive officer of the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), Khoong Hock Yun. The rest of the afternoon will see panelists from SingTel, StarHub, Motorola, Nokia, HP and many other organisations discuss the hot topic issues of the day.

This year, the focus is on whether LTE/4G can be the catalyst for change in mobile broadband, which, some say, has consigned telcos to being low-cost, flat-rate carriers offering “dumb pipes” for upstream services offered by Google, for example. The question on many lips is whether speedier LTE/4G services in future can be sold in a tiered manner, with quality of service instead of top speed as the differentiator.

Also, as important is the emerging mobile “cloud”. As more companies expand their cloud computing resources, how can they easily let corporate users log on to these cloud services via their mobile handsets and tablet computers?

And finally, the hottest topic will be on mobile OSes of the future. For some developers, it might make sense to lock on to one platform – be it iOS, Android, Blackberry or Windows Phone – to trim costs while reaching out to an optimal audience size; yet for others, the variety means they are not taken for granted by a big platform owner.

Through three interactive panels, developers, users and other fellow industry experts are set to discuss these topics in depth. This year, expect no boring pitches and death by Powerpoint – just a good discussion of the issues.

Please sign up at the UNWIRED 2011 site. See you on May 26!

Details:
What: UNWIRED 2011
When: May 26, 2011 (Thursday), 1pm
Where: Amara Hotel, Ballroom 1 (Level 3). Directions here.

UNWIRED 2011 is organised by Techgoondu writer Alfred Siew, and Techgoondu is official online media for UNWIRED 2011.