Fibre broadband installation: IDA replies

We thank Mr Raymond Toh for sharing his recent experience with the installation of fibre in his home ("Apply 'Municipal Services Office concept' in private sector"; Sept 25).

We agree that the process could have been managed better.

The Nationwide Broadband Network (NBN) structure has been designed in a way that requires the involvement of multiple service providers.

The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) has put in place several mechanisms to ensure they coordinate and streamline their work processes.

These include guidelines to provide clarity on the relationships between the operators and the end users, and the interactions among the various parties.

However, we acknowledge that despite best efforts, and given the scale of the NBN, there will be incidents where repair or installation works on-site do not take place smoothly due to operational or unforeseen issues, resulting in inconvenience to the end users.

This is an area that we will continue to work on with the service providers.

These operational and unforeseen issues may cause inconvenience at times, but these must be weighed against the advantages of the NBN.

Such a market structure has seen new entrants and now, we have more than 20 fibre broadband providers offering broadband services at competitive prices.

Consumers can now sign up for fibre broadband plans ranging from 100Mbps to 1Gbps, with prices for some of these plans starting at $29.

This is a marked difference compared with the period before the implementation of the NBN, where there were only a few service providers offering lower broadband speed plans via Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) or cable.

Ng Sook Fun (Ms)

Director, Communication

Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore

This article was first published on November 4, 2014.
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