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Technology news and Jobs arrow Cornered! arrow Broadband the Singapore way. What lessons for Australia?
Broadband the Singapore way. What lessons for Australia? E-mail
by Stuart Corner   
Monday, 29 September 2008
The Singapore Government has just announced a consortium, OpenNet, as the winner of its RFP for the building of a next generation broadband access network, and expects it to deliver a fibre to the home network capable of 1Gbps to over 90 percent of Singaporean homes and businesses by 2012. The way Singapore has gone about this is in stark contrast to Australia.

Certainly there are enormous differences between the demographics of a small city state like Singapore (just 707 square kms in area) and a vast continent like Australia which would make a similar goal in Australia unachievable or prohibitively expensive, but the Singapore government's approach has much to recommend it and much that would have been equally applicable in Australia.

Number one: The NBN itself is part of larger all-embracing plan of the city state - the iN2015 Masterplan that sets out a comprehensive vision of transforming Singapore into an intelligent nation and global city powered by information technology. That plans was launched in June 2006   following a year long consultation between Government and industry.

The Masterplan set bold (and very specific) targets for 2015: Singapore to be number one in the world in harnessing infocomm (Singapore's term for information technology and telecommunications) to add value to the economy and society; achieve a two-fold increase in value-added of the infocomm industry to $S26 billion; see a three-fold increase in infocomm export revenue to $S60 billion; create 80,000 additional jobs; have at least 90 percent of homes using broadband; ensure 100 percent computer ownership for all homes with school-going children.

Secondly, the choice of OpenNet is the culmination of a three year process that has followed a consistent path towards a goal established right at the start. The project was announced in the state budget of February 2006, and a commitment to it made the following month, with the issue of a 'request for concept'.

Responses to this established a set of prequalified potential bidders with whom the government held a year long competitive dialogue between December 2006 and November 2007. The culmination of that year long dialogue was that the government predetermined the structure of its next generation broadband network.
CONTINUED



 
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