Copper; this stuff ain't cheap.

There are many points of comparison between Singapore and Malaysia, one of which is the state of broadband infrastructure (or rather the lack thereof, in Malaysia, at least).  Since moving to Singapore to work, i’ve been enjoying the fast, unfettered and unthrottled broadband access afforded to me by signing up with a 10Mbps package from SingNet. I chose to sign up for the Mio service, which offered a combination of ADSL broadband, mobile phone line, as well as VOIP for fixed line calls. The benefits are obvious; with one being that the ‘land’ line number stays constant, no matter where you move on the island. Furthermore, i’m not tied down by the quarterly fees charged for the rental of a proper physical land line. Of course, this means that for and ‘land’ line calls to be made or received, the modem/router provided by SingNet would have to be on at all times. In the event of a power outage, i’d be screwed, but that’s a discussion for another day.

The point of all this meandering is this: SingTel’s announcement that they would increase rates for both fixed line subscriptions and calls. More about it here and here. Never mind the real reasons why SingTel chose to hike their rates, while the actual impact on home and business owners’ wallets isn’t all that extensive to begin with (S$10 more per year in terms of subscription for home consumers, for example), what’s immediately interesting is that Starhub chose that particular moment to announce that their residential voice service, Digital Voice Home (DV Home), would be made available to their StarHub TV customers, for FREE.

StarHub's S$100 carrot.

While this isn’t exactly the death knell for good-old copper land lines, it does indicate a perceptible shift in trends, away from the traditional and towards more forward-looking solutions such as IP-based technology.

Skype, fring and various other solutions allow you to talk, see and communicate with someone on the other side of the world without paying a cent, so long as you have a fast enough broadband connection and the right tools i.e. webcam, microphone and VOIP software. Using conventional instant messaging apps such as Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, you can even initiate voice chats to friends and family also online at the same time.

In the same vein, with Skype for example, you can make VOIP calls from your computer (or VOIP-enabled phone), to mobile phones and land lines for a nominal (and often dirt cheap) fee, way cheaper than making international or roaming calls. Even most third-party IDD services available here in Singapore utilise some form of VOIP infrastructure, making it seriously affordable for foreigners like me to call back home more often.

Doubters usually cite call quality, the higher risk of dropped calls, as well as latency issues among their chief complaints against VOIP implementations, but from my experience at least, there’s no such problem here in Singapore, given the relatively mature state of broadband infrastructure here. Whether Mio, Skype, fring or even voice chats through Yahoo Messenger, lousy call quality is certainly rare.

On the other hand, that’s more than I can say for my countrymen back home, who have to live with shoddy (and often non-existent) service quality from national telco monopoly Telekom Malaysia Berhad, while paying through the nose.

Bugbears aside, its altogether too obvious that VOIP adoption is highly dependent on having the right infrastructure in place, which is something that Singapore already has in spades. I for one applaud StarHub’s move, not just for giving their customers something that could help ease their financial costs during this time of economic turmoil, but for also pushing towards greater adoption of VOIP for communications.

As for me, i’ve still got about 20 odd months left on my Mio contract. And i’m just as happy with it as the first day I signed up for it.