There are essentially four service providers in Singapore that provide fibre broadband services to homes. SingTel, StarHub, M1 and SuperInternet, a newcomer to the consumer business, all offer compelling options. And depending on which forum you subscribe to, each ISP will have its supporters and detractors.
The truth is, consistency is something hard to measure on the consumer front, because unlike commercial contracts worth tens of thousands of dollars, there are no SLAs, or service level agreements, between ISPs and consumers that are easily enforceable.
Why not? Because telcos cannot afford to offer such SLAs, at the price consumers pay for their links. That’s not to say you should choose a telco blindly. The IDA publishes real, comparative throughput speeds on its website regularly, so do have a look there. I understand they only have speeds for traditional broadband plans, but should be updating the site soon with speed tests for fibre plans as well.
Should you choose a telco based on Speedtest, that Web app that everyone bases their judgement on? My advice is to try it out and see if you get a consistent reading. Sometimes, you can get wildly different readings within a minute, so don’t take one reading as the final deciding factor.
Would I recommend Telco A over Telco B? Based on my own opinions and experience dealing with them, the following is how I would rate each ISP. Disclaimer: this is not based on objective tests.
1. SingTel
Why get it: It has speedy international links (going by its record with its ADSL and mobile broadband networks)
Why not get it: It’s the most costly (S$85.90 a month for 150Mbps, and has no option for a 100Mbps service); may require you to use its 2Wire residential gateway as a router.
More details: Website
2. StarHub
Why get it: It’s proven as an telco handling high-speed services (with the 100Mbps cable modem service)
Why not get it: It’s got some issues with its network of late; may require you to use its Huawei residential gateway as a router
More details: Website
3. M1
Why get it: It’s cheap for 100Mbps (S$59 a month) and has many options starting from 25Mbps (S$39); proven customer service; does not require you to use its Huawei residential gateway as a router
Why not get it: It’s new to running its own fixed broadband network (it was offering broadband services running on SingTel and StarHub networks previously)
More details: Website
4. SuperInternet
Why get it: Lets you run what you want, including a Web server and downloading bit-torrent at top speed, because it claims to not block any ports or shape traffic; also cheapest 100Mbps at S$50 a month; does not require you to use a residential gateway
Why not get it: Unproven in the eyes of many consumers
More details: Website
What did I choose? I went with M1 in the end, after considering SingTel for the longest time. The reason: it was the cheapest option among the telcos I have been a customer with. I still remember it for its great customer service when I had a mobile line from around 1996 to 2009.
The fact that it does not require me to use its residential gateway as a router also put it ahead in my eyes. Why is this important? Because the residential gateways that are used by the three telcos here don’t seem to have full Gigabit Ethernet ports (1,000Mbps), which come in handy if you don’t want to risk having a 100Mbps or faster fibre service bottlenecked by a slow router.
The Huawei gateway that is used by both M1 and StarHub does not seem to have full Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports, so these 100Mbps LAN ports are going to be maxed out and could be inadequate for an 100Mbps service. The same with SingTel’s 2Wire router, which is listed as having only 10/100 LAN ports on its website.
Thus, the choice was easy. By going with M1, and choosing not to rent its Huawei gateway at S$2 a month, I get to set up my own souped up router, which I can use to control access speeds via its QoS, or quality of service, tools.
Another reason I chose M1: it’s cheap. It doesn’t come with so many of the extra charges that other telcos tag on, like modem rental and signup fees (SuperInternet charges S$200 for that).
Most importantly, M1’s 100Mbps plan costs not a lot more than what I was paying previously for a 16Mbps cable modem service. I could easily have gone for a 50Mbps service and still be happy, but I’ve always wanted 100Mbps, and now I can have it – for the price of a 16Mbps service*!
(*I pay more than $50 for my cable modem service because I am out of contract. It costs S$44.94 if you sign up for two years). Do check out a previous Techgoondu piece I wrote on fibre plans.
I did some quick tests on my new service. Read on.
Recently I learned a ‘hard lesson’ by upgrading my fibre broadband from 100 to 300 Mbps with a dual speed router on 5G and 2,4G. My family has 1 notebook with ‘N’ wireless card and 3 on ‘G’. The speedtest shown 290/300Mbps+ if I connect by wired to the router. Otherwise, on wireless, the one with ‘N’ wireless card clocked up to about 100/130+Mbps and the rest at about 20/30Mbps+ In actual fact, we don’t need such high-speed fibre and the saving can use to buy better network card. This is because
1. The download speed is subjected to the content provider
2. The speed also subjected to the wireless card and the maximum speed is 100Mbps plus even the broadband speed is 300Mbps
3. I do not notice any major different in speed for surfing or downloading
Anyone can give some advice? Btw, is there wireless card that can increase the speed up to 1000Mbps?
Hi Blue, that’s true. I’d agree with your observations. The speeds offered by the service provider still have to be matched by what’s on the other side – the content provider. To be fair, what the extra bandwidth also means if that you can have several streams/users at one time without anyone noticing a slowdown.
However, at current situations, where most sites or services don’t offer more than 10Mbps each, you’ll be hard pressed to max out 100Mbps or 200Mbps, never mind 300Mbps on a regular basis, unless you are a very heavy user.
As for wireless card with 1000Mbps, I really don’t have any in mind. Some Wireless AC routers and cards promise a theoretical top speed of 1Gbps or more, but I believe that’s only possible in ideal situations, e.g. no walls blocking the signals, little interference, etc.
Hey Alfie, your ex-colleague here. I’m using Starhub fiber and I must say I’m rather disappointed. Sometimes it feels like its slower than my prev cable connection! When I have more than 2 or 3 devices on, it just jams up or stops working. The connection drops frequently (never had this prob with cable) too (“no Internet connection”) and I have to reset the modem in order for it to work again. So if your cable connection is working fine for you, don’t bother with fiber. It’s a myth! —Andrew
Truglo sells both a tritium handgun sight and a fiber optic one. The fiber optic sight is significantly cheaper but is there really that much of a difference? What is the difference in the two?
I had problem on my starhub firber if I use N Rounter for download I only get the speed of less than 1 Mbps but if I use a G Rounter I am able to get the speed of 15 to 20 Mbps.
if you have speed problem on firber with a N Rounter try to change to a G Rounter and you will see the different.
singtel fibre connection apparently has problem connecting to wordpress admin panels on certain webhosting companies. Ran a test together with a US based webhosting company. Tested with M1 3G Huawei modem, OK. Tested using VPN to a campus network and use that to connect to a wordpress admin, tested OK. Only SIngtel fibre has that problem. 14 days and counting still no response from the network engineering dept.
That’s interesting. Thanks for sharing. Care to share which webhosting companies you have used? Perhaps there might be others who have had the same problem or those who have found a workaround.
Why M1 fiber optics only can download torrent limited time before 12pm only.
@ec41a25920b7fc4490012083897ac3a6:disqus
Hi, Alfred. Does it work well if I use M1 fibre broadband using just the modem provided by OpenNet and connect directly by LAN to my PC in the bedroom. Since I am the only want one using it for the time being, I intend to upgrade and connect via Asus RT-N56U Wireless Router later on. What do you think? Thx u.
Brian
Hi Brian, you mean the ONT (optical network terminator) issued by M1? It works – just make sure you know which of the ports is assigned to M1 for fibre broadband and plug it from there. Alternatively, if you choose the Huawei gateway (a router actually) from M1, that router will be plugged to your ONT and you can use any port on the Huawei router. Since you intend to use your own router, I’d recommend you go without the Huawei router. You really only need the Huawei if you want to have voice to go with the package.
@albert
Tested Superinternet 100Mbps on Bittorrent. Super fast, compared with other friends testing on SingTel, StarHub and M1 at the same time (also 100Mbps)on the same five torrents started at the same time.
My average download speeds on the same five torrents is about 4MB/s, whereas some of the rest of the folks hover between 1 to 2 MB/s.
Think it’s to do with how the ISP shapes Bittorrent traffic.
for fibre broadband users experiencing occasional disconnections, try moving the Huawei residential gateway to a different location. after moving it away from other electric devices, the problem was solved in my case. of course, a most obvious solution is to use another router, but we cannot use the phone service without the Huawei residential gateway. other users may have other solutions.
one does wonder why they did not come up with an all in one device instead of issuing two devices (a Huawei ONT and residential gateway) or at very least an ONT that has a phone jack.
The unfortunate problem in Singapore is that we have high speed local connection, with no content to consume. The same old lament and grief will be repeated in local forums about how slow international connection does not match up to the local subscribed speed.
@Alfred: any news from Starhub about revising their cable Internet speed? I had the impression that they would making that move soon after introducing MaxInfinity. Current Starhub cable modem price plans are turning obsolete.
Would like to comment the following:
1. Now, when you speak to SingTel, they will tell you local max download/upload speed as well as International max download/upload speed. So, when they sell you a 100Mbps, the local top speed is really 100Mbps but the international is may be 25Mbps. I think this time IDA really do their work to press these ISP to reveal the truth.
2. Currently I have a 15Mbps Broadband from SingTel, upgrading tomorrow to fiber Internet. But when you download from overseas, the “performance is slow” even the content provider has super bandwidth to the world. This is because the ISP here really do throttle the traffic. If they scanned the traffic to be bit torrent, they will cap the speed. Even if you download a huge file, they did that too. The only way that they do not stop the traffic is to have overseas VPN. When you do turn on the VPN, they will let it thru. So, if you do the same download again be it bit torrent or downloading the files, you will see per file download is 2Mb/s restricted by these VPN providers. So, by doing this test, you already know no matter you go with fiber or stay on cable or ADSL, Singtel’s filter will still block all these. They cannot block VPN as they cannot see what’s inside the VPN packets.
3. Big ISP got lots of customers and heavy users. So, the more users and bigger bandwidth they sign up, the more upstream IP Transit they will have to buy. But they cannot buy forever, so, they need to throttle the traffic. Small ISP has lesser users, and usually they are corporate ISP. That means, their usage pattern is heavy in day time, but at night time, they usually have lesser traffic. That is why the speed is fantanstic for these smaller ISP. But bear in mind, when more users build up, you will face the same congestion again… So, there is no best or worst ISP. All ISP needs to make money, and they will have to setup policy to cap these usage.
just some 2cents comment…
Thanks for sharing. I know this comment is already more than 2 years ago, but might be worth having the update that the ISPs seem to have removed the international barrier.
However, I still do not see the benefits of adopting this technology, given that the constraint is more towards the server side. Unless video/tele conference over Home TV/laptops gets more mainstream, it will be difficult to convince me to move.
http://info.singtel.com/personal/internet/home-broadband/fibre-broadband
“Ultra-Fast Speeds
With no international bandwidth cap, you can now surf web content at blazing speeds of up to 300Mbps.
Enjoy maximum bandwidth to surf, download and stream multimedia content with no set limit on international transfers or file sharing.”
I’m on superinternet here and loving it(although only a short while). One thing not mentioned is that superinternet does not use transparent proxies, which means you can download from filesharing sites like rapidshare with no issue. Also, they buy transit directly from NTT, a gd tier 1 provider.
Hey David, good to hear from a SuperInternet user. I think geeks will like what they offer, especially the fewer restrictions they claim to have. Glad to hear you got a nice experience there. 🙂
@Chi-Loong: Please do share your experience with them and also your peering speed with Alf. I’ve always been curious with SuperInternet but their “untested” reputation and their $200 sign up requires careful consideration.
Woah! Great stuff Alf.
I’ll be getting SuperInternet’s service this Saturday for testing purposes, so looking forward to the speed rush.