Michael Tan
CnetAsia.com
It seems that fiber is expensive like hell and there are better and cheaper ways to do bandwidth in Singapore. Let me share some figures which shocked me.
I first got my taste of fiber at my parents’ home in KL. I was shocked from the first moment, coming from a frugal business background. The complication of the install was like rocket science, the fiber was delicate, the knowledge required by the installers meant that you couldn’t just hire any electrician. The problem is that Malaysia’s trial fiber run was a FIBER TO THE HOME–which means they pull fiber right into your home and install a fiber modem there.
Photo taking was banned during the installation but now we have the Net, so here’s a similar procedure from Japan below. Remember, in Japan, because of earthquakes, all the cables are hung from telephone poles above ground, but in Singapore, you pay a hell of a lot more digging the ground.
I’m told by one of the owners of a private ISP in Pakistan that they’re doing it much more cheaply in their country. Just ONE very high speed fiber to an entire building, where they just use a simple Fiber to Ethernet switch to split the bandwidth to everybody in that building using normal Ethernet, each one capable of carrying 1Gb. Much cheaper than having to install fiber to every individual home or office.
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