Perhaps the Nats $18/month fibre broadband is possible?
see in Commsday that the OpenNet Consortium has scored the contract to build the city-state’s fibre-to-the-premises network in Singapore, with S$750m worth of government funding to back up the NBN as it’s called.
OpenNet will provide up to 1Gbit/s connections over a passive network; interestingly enough, SingTel which has a thirty per cent share of OpenNet together with AxiaNetMedia (Singapore Press Holdings has a quarter stake, and SP Telemedia, 15 per cent), intends to structurally separate itself in preparation for the NBN rollout. Ducts, manholes and exchanges for the NBN will be transferred to an independent asset company, by 2011. By 2014, SingTell says it will have sold down its stake in the asset-holding company. The idea is that the company will lease assets to OpenNet although the latter will own the fibre links.
Time-wise, the NBN looks set to happen pretty quickly: by 2010, sixty per cent of premises must be reached and by 2012, 95 per cent, with universal service obligation after 2013 coming into place for OpenNet.
The NBN looks set to be an open access network but the proposed pricing will have National MP Maurice Williamson sitting up and paying attention: S$15 a month for residential wholesale, and S$50/month for wholesale business connections.
In the recent TVNZ7/InternetNZ Internet debate, Williamson mooted National’s fibre to the premises network, saying that the pricing would be NZ$18/month wholesale. Telco people in the audience laughed at that suggestion, but what’s happening in Singapore appears to support Williamson’s estimates.
We’ll see. National’s not in power yet, and there are no real plans on the table either for the FTTP network, let alone money being allocated. New Zealand isn’t an urbanised environment like Singapore is either, but it doesn’t look like FTTP will have to cost the earth - or take forever to roll out for that matter. We should get cracking here, and stop slacking.
September 29th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Would that it were so.
But I suspect the difference between Singapore’s population density, third highest in the world at 6,489/km² and ours, 15/km² makes deployment comparisons moot.
September 29th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Hmm… we have cities too, albeit not so densely populated, where two-thirds (or is it higher?) of people live.