Singapore Expats

Hi everyone!

I am getting ready to move in to a condo this Saturday and was hoping to get some information regarding internet services.

I am coming from Japan, where I believe the internet standard is quite high relative to many countries, and so, I don't want to have something that is ridiculously slow. At the same time, I would like to find good value (don't want to spend too much).

From what I have been told, despite the condo being fairly new, it is not set up for fibre. What type of options might I have? How far in advance do I need to set this up?

Thanks a lot in advance !

If there is no fiber, your options will be limited to cable and DSL (forget about LTE, you'll have caps). In my experience so far, Singtel will be the best choice; Starhub's cable internet is a lot slower, especially when loading videos. Singtel has DSL up to 15Mbps if I remember correctly; I have 10Mbps and quite happy with it. For M1 residential internet I have only heard horror stories...

In comparison to Japan, you will probably notice the difference in international bandwidth most painfully.

Definitely Singtel ADSL 15Mbps, however you can still get fibre via Opennet.com.sg, just check with them installation fees for particular condo. Once you have the wiring done, ViewQuest seems to be the best.

If you have any intention to watch foreign TV services like Hulu, Netflix, BBC iPlayer, HBO, etc, go with My Republic. They offer their "teleporter" service which lets you watch them without using a VPN. The only thing you have to d is use their provided DNS settings (which 99% of all people do anyway).

zzm9980 wrote:If you have any intention to watch foreign TV services like Hulu, Netflix, BBC iPlayer, HBO, etc, go with My Republic. They offer their "teleporter" service which lets you watch them without using a VPN. The only thing you have to d is use their provided DNS settings (which 99% of all people do anyway).

Same for ViewQuest. According to my observations the latter provide very good customer support, consistent service and are willing to optimise certain routes if needed. They are more expensive than MR though. It really depends on the purpose, but if it is for work I'd go for VQ.

stiwi wrote:

zzm9980 wrote:If you have any intention to watch foreign TV services like Hulu, Netflix, BBC iPlayer, HBO, etc, go with My Republic. They offer their "teleporter" service which lets you watch them without using a VPN. The only thing you have to d is use their provided DNS settings (which 99% of all people do anyway).

Same for ViewQuest. According to my observations the latter provide very good customer support, consistent service and are willing to optimise certain routes if needed. They are more expensive than MR though. It really depends on the purpose, but if it is for work I'd go for VQ.

I don't know how I missed that. Damnit, I wanted VQ initially but was steered towards My Republic only because of that!

My plan with MyRepublic is $59 for 100/50mb. Viewquest was $65 for 150/75. Both of those being no contract.


Back to the OP if it's not too late:
While people here are saying Singtel DSL is better than Starhub cable (I can't comment on that, I never used Starhub), I had the 15mb Singtel DSL plan for two years and it was terrible. Real speeds to most places was closer to 6mb down/512kb up. The only place that ever got close to the advertised speeds were the speed test sites hosted by Singtel. Worse than the bandwidth, the latency is high. The DNS servers used by Singtel often time out or have issues, and the home router they provide does *not* let you change them. You have to manually reconfigure them on each system on your network. Quite a hassle, especially if you have a laptop you take to work or elsewhere.

zzm9980 wrote: [...]
Back to the OP if it's not too late:
While people here are saying Singtel DSL is better than Starhub cable (I can't comment on that, I never used Starhub), I had the 15mb Singtel DSL plan for two years and it was terrible. Real speeds to most places was closer to 6mb down/512kb up. The only place that ever got close to the advertised speeds were the speed test sites hosted by Singtel. Worse than the bandwidth, the latency is high. The DNS servers used by Singtel often time out or have issues, and the home router they provide does *not* let you change them. You have to manually reconfigure them on each system on your network. Quite a hassle, especially if you have a laptop you take to work or elsewhere.

What I can tell about Singtel DSL is that it work pretty solid consistently, over my 2 years period when I was using it I have never experienced breakdown. When I started to use ST 3 years ago, ST was the only one here having direct links with Europe (UK, Holland etc), while others SH and M1 were routing through US. it has changed now as I am temporarily on SH right now and can see improvement in this case (direct links to Europe). ST speed was depending on the location, their premium I would say european links were always throttled while most US servers were working with full speed for me.

So it seems it doesn't matter right now if OP choose ST or SH as they should both provide similar experience. I really look forward to VQ as they seem ahead of competition right now.