Top notch high-speed internet connection advice is needed

Discuss about the latest news & interesting topics, real life experience or other out of topic discussions with locals & expatriates in Singapore.
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sundaymorningstaple
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Post by sundaymorningstaple » Fri, 24 Jun 2011 1:44 pm

According to last weeks bird cage liner Singapore is just as guilty of that as Thailand is. The quoted speeds are NOT what you actually get in normal usage. In fact, I believe it was Singtel who finally published actual speeds achievable in the advertising this week. Something like only 20% of maximum theoretical speed (what they advertise). So, it's not great here at all. Lots of "Misleading" advertising. :roll:
SOME PEOPLE TRY TO TURN BACK THEIR ODOMETERS. NOT ME. I WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW WHY I LOOK THIS WAY. I'VE TRAVELED A LONG WAY, AND SOME OF THE ROADS WEREN'T PAVED. ~ Will Rogers

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Post by beppi » Fri, 24 Jun 2011 1:57 pm

According to www.speedtest.net, I have 1.02Mbps download and 0.27Mbps upload speed on a 1Mbps Singnet line right now. The result is consistent every time I test (and sufficient for my needs, incl. video calls).
I got much less (and fluctuating) out of the (more expensive) 6Mbps line I had in Thailand. The provider is owned by Thaksin - I was told others are even worse.

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Post by beppi » Fri, 24 Jun 2011 2:06 pm

The provider fixes how much of the overall bandwidth is available for up- and download (the end user has no control over this, and usually down is higher than up, because people download much more than upload) - that is what the "Asynchronous" in ADSL means.
Thus to get your overall bandwidth, you have to add the test results for up- and download. This comes to 1.29Mbps in my case - not bad for a 1Mbps line!

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Post by Wind In My Hair » Fri, 24 Jun 2011 2:58 pm

sundaymorningstaple wrote:According to last weeks bird cage liner Singapore is just as guilty of that as Thailand is. The quoted speeds are NOT what you actually get in normal usage. In fact, I believe it was Singtel who finally published actual speeds achievable in the advertising this week. Something like only 20% of maximum theoretical speed (what they advertise). So, it's not great here at all. Lots of "Misleading" advertising. :roll:
The stats revealed by Singtel were for mobile broadband only, and actual average speeds were 50-60% of the advertised maximum speeds (see report).

A study on broadband quality listed Singapore as among the top ten (7th to be exact) in the world, with South Korea and Japan leading the pack at about double the quality of Singapore (see here).

A detailed reportpublished by Akamai provides lots of data for comparison for those interested, though figures for Singapore are provided only for mobile broadband (you have to register before they send you the report in an email link).

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Post by x9200 » Fri, 24 Jun 2011 3:26 pm

For home use and the basic plans both Singtel and Starhub have pretty decent quality (up time) and performance. I use mobile broadband of both of them, Singtel scores here a bit subjectively better (possibly location related) and I have this strange impression that sometimes it is even faster than what I paid for, but then again I found the basic plans more than sufficient to my needs.

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Post by bgd » Fri, 24 Jun 2011 6:04 pm

I find that if accessing a site in Sg then performance is fine. As soon as I go offshore things slow down. Depending on time of day, Youtube, for example, can be unusable. I guess that's a limitation of the bandwidth into Sg.

That wasn't my experience in the UK (4 years back) where it seemed that pretty much all sites, regardless of location, were generally pretty quick. Possibly some slowdown when the US woke.

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Post by IOP » Fri, 24 Jun 2011 8:20 pm

Guys, by the way what do you think about Fiber broadband.
Say, this plan:
http://www.starhub.com/broadband/plan/m ... imate.html

http://info.singtel.com/sme/internet/fibrebroadband

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Post by IOP » Fri, 24 Jun 2011 8:24 pm

IOP wrote:Guys, by the way what do you think about Fiber broadband.
Say, this plan:
http://www.starhub.com/broadband/plan/m ... imate.html

http://info.singtel.com/sme/internet/fibrebroadband
Also I think maybe I just need to sign up for this plan
https://www.singtelshop.com/homebroadba ... nbb_15mbps
https://www.singtelshop.com/homebroadband/index.jsf


it looks like ADSL. Not sure about upload speed, but it's very important for me.

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Post by sundaymorningstaple » Fri, 24 Jun 2011 9:25 pm

Big thing to take note of. Cable may be faster. Fibre is limited to 15mbps for international sites (which means damned near everything unless you only want to surf government and university intranets. With cable you can get up to 25 Mbps for International sites. This doesn't seem to be noted on their site which was modified about two weeks ago, but it does show the cap on fibre of 15 Mbps.

Of course if it's just you, that is plenty of bandwidth for most anything, but if you home is like mine, there are usually 3 PC running and an iPhone concurrently (4 young adults and one very old kid - me!) All usually hooked up to Utube or FB or here or all at the same time!
SOME PEOPLE TRY TO TURN BACK THEIR ODOMETERS. NOT ME. I WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW WHY I LOOK THIS WAY. I'VE TRAVELED A LONG WAY, AND SOME OF THE ROADS WEREN'T PAVED. ~ Will Rogers

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Post by ksl » Fri, 24 Jun 2011 11:31 pm

Well I'm on optical since 8 pm tonight the speed tests done are as follows for a 50MB connection 54.22/24.77 51.65/24.30 49.50/21.25 I do now see a change in page loading time, doesn't hang so much. My web, host in USA loads in 1 sec or less. On the 10MB it was slow loading about 5 to 10 seconds sometimes.

Singapore statistics are biased, as its looking at houshold coverage. Denmark is much faster than Singapore, or i should say its more efficient, rather than faster, much of it to do with the backbone and ISP oversell on bandwidth.

ISP do not release bandwidth until consumers are screaming and leaving, its common to oversell, and statistical data, will determine the release of more bandwidth. Things are improving!

I've got the Mio package as well as the starhub TV.

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Post by breakfast_cereal » Mon, 27 Jun 2011 11:52 am

I think Singtel has launched this priority pass for their mobile broadband services which promises faster and smoother connections

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Post by sundaymorningstaple » Mon, 27 Jun 2011 1:17 pm

For sure, for more money. :-|
SOME PEOPLE TRY TO TURN BACK THEIR ODOMETERS. NOT ME. I WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW WHY I LOOK THIS WAY. I'VE TRAVELED A LONG WAY, AND SOME OF THE ROADS WEREN'T PAVED. ~ Will Rogers

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Post by Ratpick_2000 » Mon, 27 Jun 2011 3:32 pm

I think the internet speed is average at best, in Singapore. What is most frustrating is the advertised speed from Starhub versus the real speed when you do a test. I think its often a disgrace that companies can claim speeds of "up to 30mbps" when in reality the speed is 1mbps or lower 99% of the time. :x

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