The State of Broadband in Singapore
The new YouTube Speed History provides very revealing statistics on the state of broadband in Singapore, in spite of the big marketing numbers that ISPs throw out in their marketing materials (“100 Mbps!”).
How to Read the Chart
This is a chart from a StarHub “8 Mbps” connection:
Unbiased data from popular internet sites like YouTube can easily show:
- How much bandwidth your ISP is allocating to you (“You”)
- How much international bandwidth your ISP allocates to customers (“ISP”)
- How much bandwidth all ISPs in Singapore provide to customers (“singapore”)
Analysing the Results
Singapore scored 3.15 Mbps, which isn’t that far off from the global average of 2.91 Mbps.
This is highly embarrassing, considering that:
Singapore touts itself as a broadband “connected society”
The global figure includes less developed markets like China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and many other emerging markets worldwide that are still using 56 kbps modems
The Singapore figure includes business connections that are typically much better than residential ones
Referring to our chart above, StarHub is truly providing much lower YouTube performance compared to the Singapore average.
If you’re on StarHub like many of us, don’t be surprised your speed (“You”) is slower than StarHub’s average speed (“ISP”). And StarHub’s YouTube performance is way lower than the Singapore average (“singapore”).
Other ISPs, especially the big player SingTel, are providing much better bandwidth to customers
This gives weight to the frequent complaints of slow internet & YouTube performance from StarHub users in forums like HardwareZone, especially during peak hours
Singapore Broadband is Affordable?
Many published surveys show that broadband costs in Singapore are relatively affordable.
These surveys can be debunked right away based on the fact that such surveys compare advertised bandwidth found in ISPs’ marketing materials, instead of measuring the true performance of the ISPs surveyed.
The media is complicit in causing this misperception.
The Bandwidth Throttling Excuse
We all know that ISPs like StarHub are actively throttling/reducing customers’ internet connection speeds, especially during peak hours, under the guise of “managing” network traffic to “provide a good experience for all customers” especially during “peak hours”. IDA officially allows this practice.
But this flies in the face of logic when there is no way a customer can exceed the bandwidth they paid for because ISPs have the technical capability to fix bandwidth for different plans (2 Mbps, 8 Mbps, 100 Mbps).
Clearly, if an ISP is complaining that “too many” people are using up their bandwidth, the ISP is indirectly guilty of overselling because they are buying less bandwidth than what customers are promised when they sign on the dotted line, leading to the need to slow down the speed of customers’ connections below the limit that was already set for their plan.
For example, if an ISP is selling an 8 megabits per second connection like in the above charted StarHub connection, it had better provide that speed at least some of the time. Instead, the router’s statistics shows that performance over several days averages around 1-2 Mbps.
Conversely, if an ISP is not capable of reliably handing 100 Mbps plans, they should be ethical and not offer such a plan.
Instead ISPs market their connections as supremely capable of downloading videos, music and other high-bandwidth activities, while working to limit such customer activities in the background by installing traffic shapers.
Lack of Consumer Protection
Many consumers try to resolve their slow broadband problem by:
- Calling up their ISP
- Complaining to IDA
The ISP has customer service officers that read from prepared scripts that:
- Blame your computer (“Please restart. If all else fails, reinstall Windows.”)
- Blame the website you’re accessing (“Their servers suck. Their connection is slow.”)
- Blame the internet (“The servers in between the ISP and the website are unreliable.”)
If you’ve actually taken the extra step to complain to IDA, your contact information gets forwarded to the ISP, who will talk to you in a nicer manner, but still from the above script. Nor will they allow you to cancel your broadband contract unless you kick up a really big fuss.
Check out the answer to question 1 in IDA’s FAQ (“Why is my Internet/broadband connection speed sometimes slower than expected?”). Nowhere does it mention the possibility that the ISP’s connection could be at fault.
In this case, we’re talking about YouTube, owned by Google, which has major internet infrastructure and content delivery networks to ensure that performance is stellar. Blaming YouTube for being consistently slow doesn’t count for much of a counter-argument.
Will the Law Bite?
If Singapore laws were actually applied, the fact that some ISPs are throttling customers’ internet connection is a potential case of false advertising and breach of contract.
Despite the constant deluge of customer complaints to IDA about poor bandwidth, ISPs are still allowed to get away with providing way less actual bandwidth, while pumping up the numbers they market to consumers.
Are our consumer rights being sacrificed for the purposes of publicising Singapore as a broadband-connected country?
Will the regulatory authority (IDA) do anything further to improve the current state of broadband and afford some rights to broadband users?
Or will we just be asked to pay more for the upcoming “next generation broadband” that promises to be “faster”?
