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.
The no-contract deal seems to be the latest tactic employed by smaller operators to attract users away from the Big Three of SingTel, StarHub and M1.
Just a fortnight ago, upstart service provider MyRepublic said it was offering no-contract deals to the first 100,000 customers keen to sign up to its fibre broadband services.
ViewQwest has not limited the number of users it signs up for its no-contract deal, though it is retaining 12- and 24-month contracts for its cheaper and presumably more popular 60Mbps, 100Mbps and 150Mbps services.
The first fibre broadband services in Singapore went online in September 2010, but it is only this year, when 95 per cent of the country will be hooked up, that the competition is expected to really fire up.
More than 100,000 users are connected so far on fibre broadband, which works out to be about one in 10. Some 13,000 users are signing up for fibre broadband each month, up from 3,000 a month a year ago, according to Opennet, the company rolling out the network across Singapore.
To reach out to new users, smaller providers such as ViewQwest are pushing out new selling points besides just price and top speed.
ViewQwest claims, for example, not to cap the bandwidth used to download from websites hosted overseas. MyRepublic, meanwhile, has pushed out services aimed at gamers by promising low latency to popular game servers.
Not sure what the fuss is about fibre broadband? Read our Goondu Guide on fibre broadband and learn how best to switch all your telecom plans over to one provider.
It’s changed. Thanks for letting us know.
Be professional, do spell check before posting. “No contact =/ No CONTRACT”
Would spell check detect anything? Use your brain before posting.
If you got nothing to contribute, shut your big mouth shut.