Price competition likely as more ISPs start offering 100Mbps plans
By
Chua Hian Hou
CONSUMERS can expect more Internet service providers (ISPs) to launch 100Mbps consumer broadband services next year at about $75 a month or less.
Two such high-end offerings now available cost almost $90 a month.
The impetus to make available more choices in high-end broadband services is Singapore's upcoming broadband network, portions of which will be up by the middle of next year.
StarHub, awarded the tender to install the hardware for this network, will sell ISPs access to it at a wholesale rate of $21 per 100Mbps for residential lines.
This price is much lower than what ISPs offering consumer broadband services now pay StarHub or SingTel to piggyback on their networks: StarHub charges $21.56 for a 2Mbps line and $35.71 for a 100Mbps line; SingTel's charges range from $15 for a 512kbps line to $34 for a 10Mbps line.
Aside from these charges, ISPs also have to factor their other overheads - billing, customer service, overseas bandwidth charges and their profits - into the final price they now charge their customers for Internet access.
Mr Foong King Yew, consulting firm Gartner's research director for carrier operations and strategies, said the lower price was likely to lure new players into launching 100Mbps packages.
These are now available only from StarHub and M1 at almost $90 a month.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that an ISP like M1, which now uses the StarHub network for its 100Mbps broadband package, will save about $15 by switching to the new network - savings it could pass on to its consumers.
A number of ISPs, including SingTel, Pacnet and LGA, have said they will look into how they can tap the new network.
