Singapore: One nation under Wi-Fi
Firecrackers and gum chewing might be frowned upon in Singapore,
but the country is going nuts for Wi-Fi.
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: August 28, 2006, 12:24 PM PDT
By the end of the year, it will be possible to roam almost anywhere
in Singapore and get a wireless signal.
As part of its Intelligent Nation 2015 program, the island nation
will be able to boast of countrywide Wi-Fi coverage in a few
months, Bill Chang, executive vice president of wireless service
provider SingTel, said in a recent interview.
"At the end of the year, Singapore will be one mega hot spot," he
said. "They are breaking Singapore into three regions and looking
at ways to maximize coverage."
The country had a pretty good head start. The official report
released with the unfurling of the Intelligent Nation program
pointed out that Singapore already had one public hot spot for
every square kilometer at the end of last year. Communication
between hot spots will be augmented by mesh networking, according
to the Intelligent Nation report. Commercial WiMax--a wireless
standard that allows signals to travel over longer distances than
those using Wi-Fi--will begin in Singapore by the end of the year,
said Chang.
The Intelligent Nation program, officially unveiled last year,
seeks to make Singapore a global leader in communications
technology in a decade. The country doesn't have the large domestic
market, manufacturing base or low costs of places like India and
China, so the idea is to focus more on industries with a large
intellectual property component, similar to what South Korea and
Israel are doing. The program is backed by various government
subsidies and incentives.
Other initiatives in the program include digitizing public health
records, bringing broadband connections into at least 90 percent of
residences, recruiting multinationals to locate their call centers
for Asia in the country and in general boosting Singaporean
technology exports. The country hopes to add 80,000 information
technology jobs through the effort. Another goal is to put
computers into 100 percent of homes with school-age children.
This is all good news for SingTel, he added. The 127-year-old
company (it started as a telegraph provider back in the days of
British colonial rule) has emerged as one of the telecom giants of
Asia. In its 2001 fiscal year, SingTel reported revenue of $3.1
billion. Approximately 81 percent of the revenue derived
domestically. In fiscal 2005, revenue came to $8.3 billion and 71
percent came from overseas.
"We are Asia's largest multimarket mobile operator," Chang said.
"We want to be the king of the hill in Asia rather than spread
ourselves too thin."
To expand, the company cuts deals or invests in regional wireless
carriers such as Indonesia's Telkomsel and India's Bharti Airtel.
Through these alliances SingTel garners about 2.5 million new
cellular customers a month with around 800,000 coming from
neighboring Indonesia. Along with growing the cellular business,
SingTel wants to expand its managed services business.
Singapore is also investing heavily in recruiting biotech companies
and U.S. and European scientists to work in the country.
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