Singapore Expats

From reading the forum, it seems like, as recently as a year or so ago, the big telecommunications companies throttled their fiber connections for international downloads at 15Mbps. Now that it appears that has changed, who appears to be the best ISP?

My prior experience with large, established telcos tells me that the answer is probably MyRepublic or ViewQwest as opposed to Singtel or Starhub. Does anyone have any experience routinely getting over 25Mbps during peak periods for international sites/downloads?

So, yeah, which service should I get?

I use Singtel for wifi and 4G. Fast and cheap.

gheharukoh7 wrote: ↑

Mon, 18 Oct 2021 4:39 pm

From reading the forum, it seems like, as recently as a year or so ago, the big telecommunications companies throttled their fiber connections for international downloads at 15Mbps. Now that it appears that has changed, who appears to be the best ISP?

My prior experience with large, established telcos tells me that the answer is probably MyRepublic or ViewQwest as opposed to Singtel or Starhub. Does anyone have any experience routinely getting over 25Mbps during peak periods for international sites/downloads?

So, yeah, which service should I get?

It's not so simple as "which service should I get". There are dozens of fiber optic cable data suppliers that terminate in Singapore. Amongst the ones that I know of: Amazon, Google, Facebook, C&W, Tata, BT, and more that I don't remember.

Anyone who is providing island internet service will have multiple POPs (point of presence) for multiple carriers, first because different carriers go in different directions... EMEA versus across the Pacific versus APAC, versus China, and second for redundant routing in case of cable failures (more common than you might think).

You're also at the mercy of routing algorithms... you might get away with 3 or 4 hops to the USA, or you might find a dozen hops if you happen to get routed into Japan before making to a cable heading for the USA. The route can vary by time of day, bandwidth load, cable issues, MPLS programming, and more.

I have heard but have never confirmed, that all fiber coming into Singapore passes through government owned switches before data goes anywhere, and if this were actually the case, you might have a routing bottleneck at the government switches.

I'd try a couple of tracert's to the destinations where you want more speed, and see what kind of hops are displayed.

Myasis Dragon wrote: ↑

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 5:09 am

gheharukoh7 wrote: ↑

Mon, 18 Oct 2021 4:39 pm

From reading the forum, it seems like, as recently as a year or so ago, the big telecommunications companies throttled their fiber connections for international downloads at 15Mbps. Now that it appears that has changed, who appears to be the best ISP?

My prior experience with large, established telcos tells me that the answer is probably MyRepublic or ViewQwest as opposed to Singtel or Starhub. Does anyone have any experience routinely getting over 25Mbps during peak periods for international sites/downloads?

So, yeah, which service should I get?

I have heard but have never confirmed, that all fiber coming into Singapore passes through government owned switches before data goes anywhere, and if this were actually the case, you might have a routing bottleneck at the government switches.

In 2013, I was working for a systems integration company - customer was SingTel. That whole year I spent a good 95 percent of my time sitting in the SingTel AMK office working on a project to set up a website for them. One of the meetings I had was with this guy who was an admin for one of their monitoring servers and he was sharing details about how he could see exactly how much bandwidth the other providers were consuming.

I believe he did mention that ALL the internet traffic of Singapore was being sent through SingTel. Not sure if it's still the same.

smoulder wrote: ↑

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 10:05 am

Myasis Dragon wrote: ↑

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 5:09 am

gheharukoh7 wrote: ↑

Mon, 18 Oct 2021 4:39 pm

From reading the forum, it seems like, as recently as a year or so ago, the big telecommunications companies throttled their fiber connections for international downloads at 15Mbps. Now that it appears that has changed, who appears to be the best ISP?

My prior experience with large, established telcos tells me that the answer is probably MyRepublic or ViewQwest as opposed to Singtel or Starhub. Does anyone have any experience routinely getting over 25Mbps during peak periods for international sites/downloads?

So, yeah, which service should I get?

I have heard but have never confirmed, that all fiber coming into Singapore passes through government owned switches before data goes anywhere, and if this were actually the case, you might have a routing bottleneck at the government switches.

In 2013, I was working for a systems integration company - customer was SingTel. That whole year I spent a good 95 percent of my time sitting in the SingTel AMK office working on a project to set up a website for them. One of the meetings I had was with this guy who was an admin for one of their monitoring servers and he was sharing details about how he could see exactly how much bandwidth the other providers were consuming.

I believe he did mention that ALL the internet traffic of Singapore was being sent through SingTel. Not sure if it's still the same.

Considering that Temasek holds majority interests in both Starhub and Singtel, this wouldn't be too surprising.

Myasis Dragon wrote: ↑

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 5:09 am

I have heard but have never confirmed, that all fiber coming into Singapore passes through government owned switches before data goes anywhere, and if this were actually the case, you might have a routing bottleneck at the government switches.

Since they block certain sites like porn (I've been told) wouldn't this prove they have some kind of firewall?

I looked up a little bit about Singtel. It's a much larger company that I thought. In addition to its 4.1 million customer base in Singapore, Singtel has another 640 million customers throughout the Asia Pacific region.

"Singtel owns shares in many operators of other countries, including full ownership of Australia's second largest telco Optus, 40% of Bharti Airtel, the second largest carrier in India, 35% of Indonesia's Telkomsel, and 23% of Thailand's Advanced Info Service.[8]"

tiktok wrote: ↑

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 11:14 am

Myasis Dragon wrote: ↑

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 5:09 am

I have heard but have never confirmed, that all fiber coming into Singapore passes through government owned switches before data goes anywhere, and if this were actually the case, you might have a routing bottleneck at the government switches.

Since they block certain sites like porn (I've been told) wouldn't this prove they have some kind of firewall?

It's an interesting question but isn't necessarily black and white.

Mostly, Singapore doesn't block hardly any porn sites, but it does block some, so the point is taken.

But, where are these sites being blocked? They could be blocked at inbound government switches, but they could also be blocked at the ISP level with government supplied black lists. Firewalls can be placed anywhere in the network.

If you're planning on using government switches as a means of censorship, then that also takes a lot of people to handle the constantly changing internet ecosystem. The Chinese, masters of internet censorship, employ a large number of people as they try to keep a lid on the internet .

Having said that, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if all fiber traffic were being routed through a central facility before distribution elsewhere on the island. But, I have no evidence of that.

The message displayed indicates "MDA". Of course, telcos can just tailor the message to anything if the government so dictates that is the message that needs to be displayed. So that in my opinion doesn't prove the point. The confirmation for me came from the horse's mouth as I mentioned above.

Yes MD, SingTel was growing and making overseas acquisitions at a point in time. A good example of what a business model of a Singapore company should look like - the local market will quickly hit a ceiling and cannot be grown much.

It looks like ISPs are required to filter content themselves according to IMDA guidelines. These include material that "advocates homosexuality or lesbianism". Nice to see we live in such a forward thinking country

But definitely would not be surprising if the government maintained final control over all incoming connections for emergencies etc.