Why Singapore Internet sucks

Following up from Singapore telecommunications.

Speed inside Singapore is fast

Wait, you are probably looking at that Speedtest and salivating?

That Speedtest is only testing OpenNET fibre connection local to Singapore.

What about Malaysia?

Almost half now to Malaysia

What about Hong Kong?

Quarter of the speed to Hong Kong

And now San Francisco?

5mbit to SF, east coat America

And finally London

Now I can barely Facetime on this

These were taken on a Friday evening on the best M1 Fibre product you can buy, here in Singapore. Business line. Fiber BizPac 100M for almost 300SGD a month or ~220USD.

European transits go across North America

Basically if you are dealing with Europe, you are at the end of the World. There is no routing west of Singapore. Lines typically go upto Hong Kong, then Tokyo, then across North America. If you get better than 5Mbps to London you are doing very well.

Contract lengths are usually 24 months

Want a fast connection for just 6 months? Sorry, you're screwed.

All paths lead to OpenNET/Singtel

Even though there is a couple of ISPs in Singapore, they all end up on the same OpenNET/Singtel infrastructure I'm told. There is effectively no competition or innovation.

No customer service

Want to complain to your Singaporean ISP about Packet Loss on their end discovered by My Traceroute? Fat chance. No status pages or issue trackers here! No sane email responses.

Censorship in Singapore

Porn and Gambling sites are filtered by the Media Development Authority.

Adding filtering from a purely technical standpoint makes the Internet slow.

Found any of my content interesting or useful?