You would think that for such a modern and small country with tons of money to improve the life style and the fact that we live in the age of information Singapore would have one of the best systems for connecting to the internet.

Over 80% of the families have computers and many have more then 1 in the homes, then you add in Laptops and PDA that every one has you would think this place (Singapore) should be moving at a Trigabyte a second on connection speed.

If you live close to the downtown area your speed will be faster then those who live out miles away. This to some point I can understand but again this place is small. Only about 40 miles wide by 20 mile so that kin of kills that theory doesn’t it!

I have a 30,000 Mbps connect speed at home which I have never been able to reach on uploads or downloads. Some times my speed can be as low as 83kps for downloads and I’m uploading at 400. Damn I may as well put my dial-up 90v modem back in and get rid of the Broadband cable system since most of the  time it really seems faster.

At work which is close to the Central Business District (CBD) we have 54Mkps wireless system and I also connect quickly on either the deck top PC or my laptop. Keeping the speed up in the CBD I can understand but for the lonely home owner who lives in the outer areas which 100,000’s do, well you can just forget it, unless you live right to the distribution station of the provider then, MAYBE you are connecting a decent speed.

So where is the problem with the cable line connections. Lets see, first you have 1 line going into a block of flats. Mine is 16 floors high and has over 70 units in it. So that means 70 homes are using the same line for TV cable and internet connections. If everything is being used TV’s and computers then the line will drop to a crawl quickly.

Second reason; copper wire connection from the main transmission to the housing blocks, what do we still live in the 1970’s here, may as well. But many of the block in Singapore were build after 1980 and mine was build in 2001 so one would think that the latest and most modern technologies would be used during construction of the units in my area as well as other newer areas being build now.

It is so bad connecting that there has been times when just to get the Yahoo page to open for Singapore would take 5 minutes if I connected at all so trying to connect to a site in foreign country you can forget about completely.

Now your internet provider will tell you that due to the number of users the connection speed may be slower depending on usage but damn this is crazy. They have you sign a 2 year contract with heavy penalties if you cancel before the time end.

If I’m paying for a connection of speed of 30,000 Mdps that is what I should get, if not should not I be given some credit or a reduced rate? I would think that is only fair and good business too.

You may be wondering if it could be my PC, well here are my specs.

Pentium 4 w/ Windows XP Professional OS

Intel 3.2 HT processor

2 gig of ram

Here are some results from a connection speed test I did from http://www.speedtest.net/results.php I connected to server in Los Angeles Ca for this test on 31 May 07 at 3pm

IP Address: 218.212.50.5

Internet Provider: STARHUB CABLE VISION LTD

Total Tests Taken: 1

Fastest Download: 86 kb/s

Fastest Upload: 261 kb/s

Average Download: 86 kb/s

Average Upload: 261 kb/s

As you can see my download speed is in the mud.

This test was done on 1 June at 12:31am to a Singapore Server: Well the time is now 12:40am the test has not been able to start yet so you have some idea of my connection speed. Start time 1:02am of test.

Link to test- http://www.speedtest.net/result/133510771.png

Upload speed is better but how many people are uploading stuff? Not many unless you have a web site you need to upload to or you do a PnP uploading of files.

The 2 test side by side

As you can see the speed is pretty damn slow for 30,000 Mkps connection.

So what option do I have?

1. I can upgrade to a higher speed – 100,000 Mkps which I will have to get another cable modem since they said mind is only good to 30,000.

2. I can switch to another company, but which one?

With only 3 internet providers in the country you option are very limited. Be here is the key. 2 of the providers share the same cable line so what is the point of trying the company that shares the same line as the one I have now? That’s right none!

Go what a company that uses the telephone line as a dedicated line for your internet connection, this way I am not sharing it with everyone in the area. Even if only connect at 10Mkps it is still faster then a 30,000 connection where I rarely get over 5Mkps, right? Yeah I think so too.

Since it has been a few days when I started to write this I wanted to add my new test results so read it and weep like I do everything I try to connect.

So here you can see that test was conducted at different time during the day, just to be far and give a clear picture of what I pay for each month. The funny part is at time I connect a much higher speeds this goes back to the statement on usage as stated from the service provider.

So here is a test done a few days later:

Not to bad really but still no where what it should be.

Well that’s it for me and this article. If you haven’t guessed I am switching internet providers at the end of June 07. Only time will tell if my next one is any better if it isn’t you’ll hear about it.