8 in 10 S'pore households now hooked on broadband

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SINGAPORE is well on its way to becoming a wired nation.

Two years after iN2015 (Intelligent Nation 2015) masterplan was launched to harness the power of infocomm, 82.5 per cent of households here are now hooked up to broadband service.

 

The target is to hit 90 per cent of households using broadband by 2015.

 

There are now some 850,000 subscribers in Singapore who use wireless connectivity at more than 7,200 hot spots, in public places like cafes, food courts and the community clubs, under the Wireless@SG initiative.

 

Users are each chalking up almost three hours every month on the network for a range of activities such as e-mailing, blogging and visiting social networking websites.

 

These numbers were disclosed on Tuesday morning by Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts Lee Boon Yang, in his opening address at the opening of IMBX 2008, a mega high-tech trade show at Singapore Expo for infocomm professionals, government officials and business-seeking high-tech companies from around the world.

 

Dr Lee said an entirely new ultra-high speed wired network is being planned and this will bring pervasive ultra high speed broadband connectivity to all homes, offices and institutions by 2015.

 

The Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) is currently evaluating the formal bids from two consortia to build this Open Access and pervasive Next-Generation National Broadband Network (NGNBN) for Singapore, he said.

 

The new broadband infrastructure is deemed as the technology bedrock underpinning Singapore's $4 billion IT masterplan or iN2015, that enable homes to surf the Net at speeds 30 times faster than today's.

 

Dr Lee said having a pervasive national broadband network has become more important for most countries in terms of growing the economy, enhancing international competitiveness and enriching the lives of its citizens. This is evident in the rapid growth of broadband users in recent years.

 

'Broadband is what connects up people and what energises the Internet. It brings a new visual richness and multi-media experience to users,' he said.

 

Singapore's infocomm sector registered a healthy revenue growth of 13.8 per cent to $51.68 billion in 2007. Export revenue accounted for 65 per cent of the revenue, with the top three destinations for Singapore infocomm exports being North Asia (including China), the Americas and Europe.

 

Grid market hub

Dr Lee also announced that Singapore is developing a grid market hub to offer on-demand computing services from the National Grid.

 

The hub will offer services to anyone, anytime and anywhere on a pay-per-use basis. Individuals and SMEs can gain access to a range of productivity tools on a pay-per-use basis.

 

Three newly-appointed National Grid Service Providers will be offering such cost-effective and affordable computing services to businesses and individuals by the end of the year, said Dr Lee.

 

National authentication framework

The Minister added that IDA will take the lead in developing a national authentication framework to create a trusted and conducive platform to access Next Gen Services.

 

Dr Lee said to enable the growth of online services and encourage greater usage, the provision of a secure and trusted environment is most critical.

 

IDA will issue a call to the industry in the second half of this year to develop a nation-wide authentication framework and will invest $20 million in this infocomm security initiative.

 

Broadband will be Cheaper In Future