Sep 6, 2007
Broadband race heats up with M1's new fibre optic
network
Telco plans to fork out $60m to lay own cables to offer speeds of
100mbps
By Alfred Siew
THE race for 'next-generation' broadband services is hotting up. M1
is preparing a fibre optic network that will eventually enable
Internet surfing at 30 times the speeds it now offers.
The network, due in two to three years, would help put M1's fastest
Internet speed on a par with that of an existing service offered by
StarHub.
Costing $40 million to $60million, the islandwide network will
essentially be a 'backbone' hooking up M1's cellphone base
stations, wireless broadband users on the go, and in future, homes
too.
M1 now pays third parties such as SingTel about $20 million a year
to route traffic through their networks.
M1 chief executive (CEO) Neil Montefiore said the telco has decided
to sink its own cables into the ground, to cut costs in the long
term and boost speeds ahead of a tough broadband market.
By connecting to faster cables in the ground, M1 will find it
easier to boost wireless surfing speeds to 100 megabits per second
(mbps) - 30 times the 3.6mbps it offers currently - in the coming
years.
This will put it on a par with the fastest service in the market
now, which is StarHub's 100mbps offering that has been taken up
mostly by heavy Internet surfers.
To eventually extend the fibre optic cables to every home, M1 may
still have to foot a yet undetermined amount.
But to users, these future services will offer more choice, as
service providers prepare to boost speeds in the next few
years.
With faster links, a movie could be downloaded in minutes, instead
of the hours or even days it now takes.
The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) is pushing
for faster broadband speeds in the country with a tender out for an
ultra-fast broadband network that will let people watch
high-definition (HD) movies and send huge data files in just
minutes.
An IDA spokesman said the network, dubbed Next Generation National
Broadband Network, will be rolled out on time in 2012, despite
recent delays in its call to telcos for proposals.
Some operators such as M1 - which has tendered for the job - are
firing up their engines before the tender results are out next
year. Mr Montefiore said building work will begin as soon as the
end of this year, after M1 selects the contractors for the
job.
'We will build it even if we do not win the tender from the
Government,' he told The Straits Times.
Rivals SingTel and StarHub are not sitting still either. SingTel
plans to hook up homes with fibre optic cables, which enable almost
infinite speed boosts over the ageing copper wires commonly used
now.
SingTel's CEO for Singapore, Mr Allen Lew, said this is likely to
take place after results are out for the Government's
next-generation network, which some experts say will cost up to $1
billion.
He argued it made more sense to extend SingTel's existing fibre
optic network to homes, rather than rely on the copper phone lines
that carry Internet traffic to homes now.
StarHub, meanwhile, has said it is ready to boost speeds to 160mbps
'in the near future'.
Market watchers expect all three telcos to jostle for customers
with ever faster services, as competition heats up.
Mr Foong King Yew, research director at Gartner, pointed to HD
videos, song downloads and online gaming as things that will gobble
up bandwidth at home. 'The demand may just stack up if several
people go online at the same time,' he said.
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reserved.
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