By Leonard How
SINGAPORE, May 10 (Reuters) – Singapore Telecommunications
Ltd, Southeast Asia’s biggest telecoms firm, on
Thursday acknowledged mobile Internet speeds in the city-state
are slow and said it is introducing plans that offer more
reliable connections.
Despite being a major Asian business centre with a
tech-savvy image, Singapore is among the countries with the
slowest mobile Internet speeds, according to checks by Google
.
Using a mobile device, a typical page takes an average of 12
seconds to load in Singapore, Google data shows.
That is far slower than the 4.6 to 6 seconds in Hong Kong
and South Korea. Singapore’s mobile data speeds even lag Vietnam
but are faster than Malaysia and Indonesia.
SingTel, the biggest of three mobile providers in Singapore
with just under 50 percent of the market, said it has addressed
the problem by offering higher-end plans – for a price – that
promise narrower fluctuations in data speed.
More plans will become available as it rolls out its
fourth-generation or 4G network. SingTel has also stopped
offering unlimited download mobile plans to reduce network
congestion.
“We’ve done a lot of research and surveys in that area and
we’re very confident that as we start to give a better quality
network and less variations in terms of speed, customers will
value that a lot more,” Allen Lew, chief executive of the Group
Digital Life unit, said at a media briefing.
But James Sullivan, head of Asia telecom research at J.P.
Morgan, said improving the network will only partially address
the problem in Singapore as the biggest bottleneck for users
involves accessing content that is hosted overseas.
Mobile Internet speeds on wireless packages apply only to
locally hosted content.
“Seventy percent of content Singapore users access is
offshore – some people would put it at 90 percent – and that is
equivalent to an eight-lane highway leading onto a one-lane
highway,” Sullivan said.
Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority, the industry
regulator, said last month it was speeding up the roll-out of
its 4G networks. Part of the plan includes reclaiming the
spectrum in the 1.8 gigahertz band now used by second-generation
mobile services.
SingTel now offers “Priority Pass” services that start at
S$40 ($32) per month, which is about a third higher than its
basic mobile data plan, according to its website. Such services
give priority access when there are many users in the vicinity.
SingTel and rival M1 offer 4G services in
Singapore, with coverage limited to the central business
district and several other high-use areas. StarHub,
the third provider, plans to launch 4G services later this year.
