yeah yeah.... wat's the relevance when it's not in
singapore?
here's a lowdown on the beginnings of our local consumer ISP scene,
which started only in 1995...
Commercial networking in Singapore (and indeed Asia in general)
began later than in the US, Canada, or Western Europe; however,
they seem determined to catch up quickly. This section profiles
Pacific Internet, SingNet, and Cyberway, the three ISPs licensed by
TAS since 1995.
Pacific Internet (PI)
PI began as the university network, Technet, five years ago, and
became commercial two years ago. They have approximately 85,000
analog dial-up customers and 300 corporate accounts (40% ISDN, 42%
64k, and 18% 128k). Like the other ISPs, they offer a variety of
services including Web hosting, server collocation (< 5
customers), fax, pager and cell phone (text) gateways and Internet
gaming. Their international links are three EI circuits to Japan
and one third of a T3 to the US.6.
PI differentiates themselves as selling the Internet as a lifestyle
product, not a
technical product. They co-market with large brands and channels
like mcdonalds and supermarkets. They are also in early talks with
various Web TV vendors. They are beginning to sell to housing
developers with the intention of serving buildings. They are
targeting vertical industries with their business marketing, for
example, insurance, legal, shipping, and real estate
companies.
They also claim a more private-sector mindset as an organization
than SingNet which they feel was shaped to some extent by its roots
in what had been a government owned monopoly telephone company.
They are more flexible and less bureaucratic.
Their Web site is the most visited in Singapore. They claim to
receive 60 million hits per month, compared to 3.5 million for
Cyberway and 15 million for SingNet.
SingNet
SingNet, the first commercial ISP, is a subsidiary of Singapore
Telecom, which has a telephone monopoly until the year 2000, but
operates at an arms length from them, and derives no advantage from
the relationship. This impartiality is audited by TAS.
They offer much the same services as the others, with approximately
100,000 analog dial-up accounts, 3-400 ISDN accounts, and 2-300
leased lines. Their other services are Internet paging, mobile
phone email, wireless access, Web hosting, Web co-location, fax
gateway, and assigning domain names.
My subjective impression is that they may be a bit more engineering
oriented and less attuned to commercial marketing than the other
networks, but that was based on visits to only two back-office
locations and one walk-in registration center.
SingNet is distinguished from the others in that they operate the
Singapore Internet Exchange (STIX) which is seeking to become a
leading regional hub. STIX peers with the other Singaporean ISPs
and with several networks in the region. (While they would state
who they exchanged traffic with, they were somewhat vague about
which links were upstream, peering, and downstream).
The decision on whether or not to peer with someone is made on a
case-by-case basis after study of traffic patterns. For example,
they saw a lot of traffic between them and Japan was going through
the US, and decided a direct connection to Japan would pay for
itself. Peers each pay for one half-circuit, and do not charge each
other. Downstream customers pay for the entire circuit, plus
fees.
STIX has 37 links to 24 nations. The difficulty in building an
intranational backbone is illustrated by Indonesia which has three
STIX customers who are unwilling to cooperate with each other. A
big ISP does not want to subsidize his competitor by allowing them
to achieve a lower communication cost, and the small ones do not
want to advertise that they connect through a larger
competitor.
Their Competition is A-Bone in Japan, Net Plus from Hong Kong
Telecom, and
KDD. A-bone has fewer than 10 customers, all at 2 mb. Net Plus has
a similar mix to STIX: 64k-1.5m. KDD has around 60 ISPs and
exchanges traffic with Asia, Australia (Telstra) and New Zealand. A
list of IXs maintained at
http://www.isi.edu/div7/ra/NAPs/naps_ap.html shows the following
IXs in the region:
HKIX - The HongKong Exchange
NSPIXP-2 - (In Japanese!)
IMnet - From NTT & KDD (under development)
NZIX - Neutral New Zealand 
STIX - Singapore Telecom gets into the act
MM-MAP - Metro Manila (Philippines)
Western OZ Internet Exchange
AUIX - Some Australian Exchanges which seems to be limited to
being an Australian ISP peer point)
CyberWay
CyberWay is the newest ISP. They are owned by SPH and STEC. Unlike
the other two ISPs, they competed for their license, and won on the
basis of their emphasis on customer service and support. CyberWay's
one-time licensing fee of $450,000 was imposed retroactively on the
first two ISPs to level the playing field.
CyberWay offers the same array of services as the others, and has
35,000 analog dial-up customers. They have a 15 Mb/s link to Canada
and a 256k link to Japan. (Fifteen percent of their traffic is
within Singapore). CyberWay stresses strong marketing and customer
service. Examples of their marketing programs are:
lower rates on weekends
reselling through 26 partners (VARs) who specialize in schools
and other
businesses (customers include government, SBA, NCB, IBM, NTT,
banks, etc.
direct sales force for business accounts
free (1 MB) home page for all customers (
CD-ROM with $200 software with sign up
web development tools to support people with home pages
mirror site for Two-Cows and Simtel
Personal News Watch -- selected News groups (not sure how this
works -- it may just be a .newsrc file for Usenet News with a news
reader)
registration centers in department stores, cyber cafes, computer
stores, events like the Singapore Book Fair, etc. -- accounts are
activated within 10 minutes and the store gets a commission
They are the leader in meeting QOS requirements of the TAS. (TAS
discusses QOS on their Web page, but there is little information of
value to a potential
customer).
