The Broadband Hustle

When it comes to marketing broadband services, there is no such thing as coincidence. Singapore has a few mobile phone carriers (SingTel, M1, StarHub) and broadband carriers (SingNet, StarHub, Pacific Internet). Now M1 is moving into fixed broadband by re-selling service based on StarHub's cable network.

It's an arrangement familiar in England where BT's OpenReach wholesales aDSL service to many ISPs, including themselves. StarHub will charge $35.71 (£13.27) a month to M1 who will then sell broadband service for up to S$88.50 pm (£32.89).

The wider story is that StarHub and M1 are in one of the two consortiums bidding for the NGNBN (new national fiber network) that is due to be announced any time, although an insider has already tipped it will go to the SingTel consortium.

The non-coincidence is that out of the blue, the Merlion household was cold-called by our existing broadband supplier, StarHub. We have been with them since we arrived 22months ago and have been contract free since the end of the first year. We pay S$59.80 (£22) for an 8Mbps/256kbps service that is Okay.

Given the choice, I'd change to SingNet on aDSL because Starhub do traffic shaping at busy hours. Trying to download (not watch, just download) YouTube videos on a Sunday night just fails, and slows to a crawl during evenings generally. SingNet have a better backend network and indeed use it to stream realtime video for their Mio (said Mee Oh) video on demand (VOD) service.

So when StarHub call and offer 25% off for a 2 year lock-in, I declined faster than a scalded cat. I hate lock-ins and, as is common with most of these deals, the cost to breakout of the deal is to pay the entire outstanding balance up to the end of the lock-in contract.

I haven't moved to SingNet for exactly the same reason. Only their entry level 512kbps aDSL has a 1 year contract term. All the faster plans are 2 years with the usual full penalty breakout. No deal.

The problem is freebies. If I commit to 30months with StarHub, I could get a 'free' laptop. Two years with SingNet gets me mobile discounts or whatever the offer is this month. I can't get a freebie-less deal without the term lock-in because the local market is saturated and stopping subscribers jumping ship at the first whiff of a better deal elsewhere is the main preoccupation of the marketing departments.

This also explains the horrible websites of these providers, especially SingTel [Ed: just re-vamped so looks nice but functionally similar] that, as you may now realise, are not there to inform, but to sell. I go looking for facts and get gypsy carnival style bait'n'switch showmanship. Just read the tiny footnotes if you doubt me.

Singaporeans are mercenary consumers who consider it a statutory obligation to change suppliers to get a better deal and publicly congratulate themselves on their savvy. Most change mobiles every 12 months. In my case, I stay with StarHub not because I'm locked in but because I am not. Lacking clarity of my tenure here in Singapore, I just sit on a contract-free, traffic-shaped StarHub line, paying a little more each month. As they say, Freedom isn't Free.

Book Museums

Libraries have been called the last vestiges of free public space and indeed the dictionary definition of a library as a repository of books ignores their other important social roles; respite, association, teaching, literacy and so on.

It's going to be interesting to see how libraries operate when the age of the book is at an end. I love books and have collected, in an undirected fashion, sufficient kilos of them to realise their limitations for convenient data delivery. In the digital age, books become art works, and sooner than you expect.

Perhaps provocatively, the Extinction Timeline places libraries at 2019. If you think online books, magazines, newspapers all delivered on large, touch-screen table displays that's not so far fetched. The newly built public library in Seattle doesn't have book shelves in anticipation of the demise of paper and instead has a multi-purpose space with casual piles of books to encourage browsing and discovery much like surfing the web.

In the meantime, Singapore has a wonderful set of main and community libraries designed along traditional lines. And when I say traditional, I'm thinking King Ashurbanipal would instantly recognise a Singapore library as a version of his library of clay tablets in the 7th century BC. There's refinement of the model, though I would argue, little innovation.

Books have RFID tags so checkout is at a computer station; insert your id with barcode, then place each item on the reader. Returning items may be done at any branch via an external (hence 24x7) book drop; a letterbox hole with a slide that scans the books as they drop into a bin. To discourage dropping other things, there's an enormous TV camera lens above the slot, pointing at your head. It's why I always stand to one side when returning books (petty defiance in the face of petty surveillance is always justified).

Their computer systems are so-so. With some effort to navigate the frankly haphazard website, you can create an account and receive e-mail notifications of events and, most usefully, a 7 day count down of items due allowing you to renew online (50c / item) when you realise you won't make it in time. A new trick is an e-mail confirming return:

Dear [redacted]

Thank you for using NLB's e-notification service through email, a free service available to all library members. This daily-based notification confirms the number of items you have returned at the library bookdrop.

You have returned 1 NLB item(s) on 14 Jun 2008.

The details of item(s) returned are as follows:

[redacted]
Returned At: Ang Mo Kio Community Library At 12:10 PM

The above information is correct as at 14 Jun 2008 11:46 PM.If you have returned more items after this, they will be reflected in the next day's notification email. Please also note that the absence of a notification is not a valid reason for waiver of library fines.

You may also check your updated account status at www.nlb.gov.sg or call our Hotline at 6332-3255

If you have any outstanding library fines, please pay them promptly at your nearest library today and be fines-free!

Thank you.
Regards,
NLB Administrator

The main reference library has a 6 month trial of Intelligent Bookshelves with RFID readers on each shelf so the system can determine location, and hence presence or absence, of any item. It also supports stock-taking and browsing statistics (books removed briefly count towards their recorded popularity).

It's good stuff in principle although the real challenge is getting the cost down sufficiently for mass deployment. But I can't help feeling it's tackling the wrong problem. I want an all digital library accessible from home & my mobile phone. The vestigial library building becomes an air-conditioned public space for association, art and Internet access.

I have no doubt the technology is well within our reach, but I fear my online idyll is doomed by Mickey Mouse. Disney, Microsoft and the big film studios have successfully lobbied for ever extended copyright protection and defence. Singapore has acceded to these policies and extended protection of copyrighted works to 70 years. The rigourous protection of intellectual property (IP) is a key plank of Singapore's promise to big business; the manifest benefits to society of the creative re-mixing and adapting of ideas into new forms doesn't have the same lobbying power.

So Singaporean libraries are unlikely to turn digital any faster than US mega-corporations permit. Despite possessing vision, ambition and capital resources, they cannot show leadership here.

YouTokenism

At this rate, I'm going to sound obsessed by censorship but I'm only reacting to the news, and it segues nicely from the report a couple of days ago about the arrested blogger and his vindictive diatribe.

The new news is that Singapore's Media Development Agency (MDA) has just adjusted its banned website list. I knew the Government can monitor telephone calls (LI, or Legal Intercept) but I am fairly ignorant of any Internet controls and presumed all adult sites were illegal or blocked or both.

The ST article relates how the MDA has put 2 popular video sharing sites onto its list of 100 blocked sites because of uploading & sharing of adult-themed videos. These 2 sites are #19 and #33 on the current Singapore 100 most accessed sites ranking.

First question: what are the sites? The article was sensibly silent on this but the top 100 sites list is easy to find (they are the unimaginatively named YouPorn and RedTube). I've never heard of either of them but what's more interesting is that now that the MDA has added these 2 sites to their 100 blocked sites, they'll have to drop 2 sites already on the list.

Next question: what happens if you try to access a block site? According to another blogger, you get a blank web pages with:

The site you requested is not accessible.
For more information please check Media Development Authority.

The MDA doesn't publish the full list of banned sites but at least they are upfront about the block when you hit one. In England, BT introduced blocking of kiddie porn with project CleanFeed in 2004, and it's now mandatory for all UK ISPs.

So panic over; this is symbolic censorship, not the Great Firewall of China. The Government can validly claim to be blocking morally contentious web content, while the populace gets on with enjoying the other 100 million sites on the Internet. You can't dam the Yangtze with a pebble. Apparently, the block list only affects home Internet connections; offices and commercial connections are unrestricted.

By the way, the most popular sites in Singapore are:

1. Yahoo.com
2. Google.com.sg
3. YouTube
4. Windows Live
5. Blogger
6. Friendster
7. Google.com
8. MSN
9. Facebook
   
10. Wikipedia

Baidu, the Chinese search site is at #14, MySpace at #35. So US mainstream companies dominate, highlighting a surprising absence of big-hitting Asian web portals. Addressing this issue is the MDA's real day job as they try to establish Singapore as a regional New Media and gaming development hub.

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

I know what treason means, it's actions disloyal to your country, but sedition is different; it's actions to destabilise or foment opinion against the Government. Wikipedia defines it thus:

"Put simply, sedition is the stirring up of rebellion against the government in power. Treason is the violation of allegiance to one's sovereign or state and has to do with giving aid to enemies or levying war. Sedition is more about encouraging the people to rebel, when treason is actually betraying the country."

The reason I'm explaining this is because Singapore has a sedition law and it's getting used against people who publish on the Internet, ie, bloggers. The latest was Tuesday; a Chinese man was arrested and had computer equipment seized for a blog post 2 months ago. Unfortunately for him, someone actually read it and linked to it on a popular socio-political blog (tomorrow.sg) saying how stupid this guy was. Then people complained. Then the police turned up.

So what did he say? It was an unnecessary, ignorant, crude tirade about a guy sitting on the floor of an MRT carriage. Where he got into trouble was that he stated and taunted the guy's race so he potentially fell foul of Section 3(e)

"(e) to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore"

Previous cases of sedition include (from the ST article):

• April 2008: Ong Kian Cheong, 49, and wife, Dorothy Chan Hien Leng, 44, charged under Sedition Act and Undesirable Publications Act for allegedly distributing evangelistic publication that cast Prophet Muhammad in negative light.
• 2006: 21-year-old accounts assistant given stern warning for putting up offensive cartoon of Jesus on a blog.
• 2005: 27-year-old man becomes first since 1966 to be jailed (for a month) for posting racist comments online. In connected case, 25-year-old given day's jail and fined maximum $5,000. Later that year, 17-year-old blogger given probation.

As an Englishman, this feels very strange. Robust personal speech in England is not protected by a constitution as in America but having an angry, both-barrels rant doesn't feel like a criminal offense. I haven't read the full blog post (he has already deleted it and plans to write an apology) but I don't see incitement or a subversive intent. If he was a Hollywood celebrity, he would issue a written apology, check into rehab then tearfully repent on Oprah. Better to shun intolerance; gagging the source is at best unimaginative, and at worst, generates publicity.

England has not had race riots in recent memory (unless you count Brixton and Toxteth?) whereas Singapore has (1964) and the Government is determined to not just create but enforce a peaceful, multi-racial society. The issue of public expression is contemporary with the British Government's attempt to frame a Racial Hatred law so strict that comedy clubs would have to close due to lack of source material.

Only last week, the Singaporean Government wrote in response to an open letter from a group of prominent bloggers that its regulatory light touch of the Internet was clearly working and is now open to an even lighter-touch regime. So far, it's all sledgehammers and crushed nuts.

So I started off a teensy bit smug that England doesn't have or need a law on sedition but the Internet is turning every home into a printing press (which must be registered in Singapore) and the legal balance between this new-found public expression and social responsibility is in flux.

Gone Missing

The annual Miss Singapore Universe beauty pageant crowned Shenise Wong as the winner last night but you'll have to read about in the paper as it wasn't televised by MediaCorp due to falling audience interest. Shenise is pretty, tall, dark and a foreign exchange broker who when asked what animal she would most like to be chose a dog, for its loyalty and intelligence.

Even with the publicity from films like Miss Congeniality, a Sandra Bullock and Michael Caine light comedy of a few years back, the tense world of lip gloss and sling backs is a sub-cultural backwater. The Straits Times have a discussion board that is often refreshingly down to earth and welcome contrast to the stuffy tone of the main paper. On this topic, the apathy was tangible so when one commenter linked to the missosology.org and I initially mis-scanned it as misogyny.org (how Freudian is that?).

This is the kind of sideways contextual teleport that is unique to the web. The site's About This Website is a hoot; it was setup by a Filipino in 1998, initially as a personal site, but by 2001 was dedicated to the various Miss Whatever competitions, and was quickly creaking with 115 hits a day, requiring a change of hosting company. Wow, 115. Per day.

Shenise and her canine fantasy now go on to represent Singapore in the international finals held in Vietnam in July.

Internet killed the Radio Star

6am, I awake to the BBC World Service radio broadcast (88.9MHz FM). I get 5 minutes of world news, then Newshour (lasting 55mins if you are counting). It's what you would expect from the BBC and is old-school world news: disasters, the UN, plane crashes. Intended for a global audience, you do have to suffer such explanations as "the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown" but occasionally you get gems like a piece on road tolls where they decided to survey "black cab drivers". Sunday morning you get 30min of From Our Own Correspondent which tends to be more insightful and off-beat.

Technology though is creating some amazing opportunities. Years ago, I used to listen to Virgin Radio (pop music) and BBC R4 (for intelligent conversation). Then I dropped Virgin in favour of iTunes where I have about 50 days worth of music on random access without adverts. Now I'm dropping R4 in favour of podcasts and Internet streaming radio. I briefly dallied with the Listen Again feature for things like I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue but I tend to forget and kept missing episodes.

The Today podcasts keep me in touch with the core UK political scene and I like Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time. Then I have all the technology, business and language podcasts which I can put on the iPod if I want, or just listen to in batches as the mood takes me. I've no idea what Singapore radio sounds like but I think they are all commercial stations and I no longer suffer adverts.

(Ch)internet

I had pretty high expectations on this trip for being able to remain connected and continue the e-mail, blogs and such like. Now back in Singapore, I can report it's been a very mixed bag. The Hong Kong hotel had wired Internet for £2.66 / hour, or £8 / day, but that was per computer, so 2 travelers would need to pay separately. I'm 60% confident that my Apple Airport Express wireless router would allow 2 computers to share a connection so mental note for future trips, but don't tell anyone heh?

The Guangzhou hotel was similar to HK: £2.66 / hour, £4 / day but now behind the Great Firewall of China, blogger.com was inaccessible and my GMail went AWOL as well, staying in "Maintenance Mode" until well after I left China. I haven't figured out who to blame for the GMail blackout; it might be a defensive posture when Google suddenly sees a login from an IP address within China, or just a technical burp, but the timing suggests a Chinese connection. Whatever, I'm now far less keen to recommend GMail for business use unless you have a backup as I was locked out for over 3 days.

If you are wondering, the selective Internet blocking in mainland China won't affect Olympic visitors as they plan to derestrict the IP addresses for the buildings and hotels reserved for foreign visitors for the duration of the games.

Despite the room rate being fully one third that of HK, the NingBo hotel Internet was wired and free, as in, without charge. But with all the services I needed (blogger, GMail, encrypted tunnels) not working, it was the most frustrating of times. It seems free Internet and Internet freedom are mutually exclusive.

Back in Hong Kong, working feverishly in a daily 1 hour window, everything came back online. Hong Kong advertises a free (no cost) GovWiFi network, whose phase-1 works from libraries and some of the larger Government buildings. I never found the signal and couldn't connect.

A local HK telco, PCCW, has WiFi-enabled phone booths that provide access to their subscription and Pre-Pay services, but as a visitor, I might as well use the hotel rather than sit on a kerb.

I held out some hope for 3G cellular data and popped into a 3 shop, the retail front of the local 3G telco. They had the same Huawei 3G data modem that I have in Singapore, and their hardware is not networked locked like mine, but they don't do the 3G data tariff on a PAYG basis.

Throughout all of this, Google defaulted to a Chinese language interface. Everything is in the same place on the page and the search results are still English but it slows you down a tad. Geographic language selection is a sound technical choice, but I should learn how to force revert to .com or at least English at the .com.hk domain.

After 10 days of this, it was looking pretty grim leaving me in the mood to be pleasantly surprised when the Hong Kong airport offered free WiFi Internet with nothing blocked so I blogged and e-mailed and talked to my machine at home until the gate boarding queue for the plane was down the last 3 people. Finally.

Social Libraries

Singapore's district libraries, termed Community Libraries, are more like Community Drop-in centres. With books. People do go there to read but also just to cool off in the air-con (which is set a couple of degrees too low for long-term comfort), feed babies, read newspapers, do homework with school mates before splitting up to go home, use the wireless Internet access and to borrow books. I go there for the books and sometimes to work, purposes that place me in a minority.

Bishan library is a funky building with a really good collection of books. There are glass protrusions from the front elevation which you can sit in, but it's all hard walls and floor so they're not that great to use. The other odd design decision was to dispense with stairs up to the 2nd floor and use a long ramp. You have to walk further and it's more tiring than stairs. I'm all for accessible buildings but is this a glimpse of the future where all stairs are converted to long, switchback ramps? Maybe they were planning for when we will all own Segways.

Eating, drinking, smoking and using mobile phones are all banned in libraries but Bishan has a decent cafe on the ground floor which annoyingly has the monopoly on the nice tables and chairs. Its round company logo is such a direct rip of Starbucks in a brown color scheme I half expected the place to be called StarBooks. So if you want a nice table and chair you have to stump up for a coffee, espresso or smoothie. It's relatively expensive. Most of the school kids buy a coke and make it last a whole homework session.

I popped into my old library in England a few months back and was struck by how much it had changed since I first used it when it opened 25 years ago. Half of the upstairs was converted into an Internet cafe and the lady handing out tickets casually stated the building was no longer fit for purpose but couldn't be replaced because it was protected. Singaporean libraries are also caught in this transition. Clientèle split roughly into thirds; some just want a cool building to sleep, read a paper or do homework, others want books and the rest just want Internet access. In Sembawang library, you have to watch your step as people plug laptops into power outlets at pillars and just sit on the floor.

All of which highlights the problem with modern libraries. Fifty years ago, they existed as valuable civic amenities when people couldn't necessarily afford books or homes with space for big study tables. Where else could you access a wide range of research and reference material? Librarians were knowledgeable researchers and libraries were impressive civic structures to store physical books. The Internet makes information weightless and volumeless. Library designers are slow to acknowledge they are going the way of high-street banks. Banks used to be impressive stone buildings intended to induce trust and to protect cash. Now there are often just a row of ATMs with most transactions occurring online.

Whyless@SG

I should be a huge fan of wireless@SG, but I'm really not. Not yet anyway. Wireless@SG is the Government sponsored WiFI network that was launched last year. It is not, as is often reported, an island-wide network, but rather a collection of hotzones around MRT stations and shopping centres intended for use while on-the-go. It certainly doesn't reach anywhere near my house. The closest would be the McDonalds either at Khatib or Northpoint.

It provides a free, unlimited use, basic Internet service running at (up to) 512kbps downlink, but you can chip in and pay for a premium service. The free service is subsidised (until 2010 at the moment) by the Government to promote wireless services and devices. They divvied up the contract to 3 operators who each cover about one third of the island. You have to register to use the network but a login account on any of the 3 operators works everywhere. Some locations automatically SMS you the URL when you come in range of a hotzone which is great for tourists and visiting business types.

My first experience was pretty poor. I applied online but used my home phone number. You were supposed to provide your mobile so they could SMS you the password so I needed a frustrating support call to get going. Pretty poor show as mobile numbers begin with "9" and landlines begin with "6" so the software should have caught that one.

In use, my major gripe is that it hardly ever works when / where I need it. Sure, sat in the lobby of SingTel CommCenter you get fantastic signal strength but elsewhere it becomes theoretical. Portable devices like phones & laptops don't have great antennas and may not even run at full transmit power so you really need to be close in to a node.

It's a pity you can't change your password so I have to remember 8 or 9 random letters and numbers. Logging in is done by portal page which captures your first web access. This is very common, but you need a full browser and keyboard. Until you login in, other IP services such as remote login won't work.

The last minor gripe is the incessant marketing. Every time you login, (with SingTel at least) you are asked to answer 2 personal questions. I positively refuse to volunteer information which is going to be used against me so I always get prompted with the questions. They are trying to provide location based services, but still the full list is mind-bogglingly intrusive:

"Imagine you can see promotions based on your preference around you when you log on to SingTel Wireless@SG! Isn't that fantastic?! No pop ups, mass email spamming or SMS alerts! All you need to do is to fill in the following questions so that we can serve you better."

• Name
• Family Name
• ID Type [I/C (pink or blue), FIN, Passport (foreigners only)]
• ID No.
• Date of Birth
• House No/Blk/Tower
• Street Name
• Floor / Unit No
• Building Name
• Postal Code
• Dwelling Type [ HDB | Private Property ]
• Email Address
• Mobile Number
• Home Phone
• Office Phone
• Fax
• Gender [ Male | Female ]
• Marital Status [ Single | Married | Others ]
If married, do you have any children? [ Yes | No ]
• Educational Level [ Below Secondary | Secondary| Post Secondary | University | Post Graduate ]
• Occupation [ Professionals / Managers / Executives | Proprietor / Business Owner / Company Owner | White Collar | Skilled Worker | Semi-skilled Worker | Students | Homemakers | Retired | Others ]
• Industry [ Manufacturing | Construction | Wholesale & Retail | Transport & Storage | Hotels & Restaurants | Information & Communications | Financial Services | Real Estate & Leasing Services | Professional Services | Admin & Support Services | Community, Social & Professional Services ]
• Personal Income [ No income | Less than S$1,500 | S$1,500 – S$2,499 | S$2,500 – S$3,999 | S$4,000 – S$5,999 | S$6,000 – S$9,999 | S$10,000 & above ]
• Household Income
• Which of the following are of interest to you: [ Entertainment |
Sports/Fitness/Health | Dine/Wine/Night Life/Clubs/Pubs | Fashion/Arts/Culture | Travel/Lifestyle | Business/Computers | Movies/Music | Gaming ]

Crikey, bad survey alert! Another major Singaporean organisation too timid to use the word sex and fluffs it with gender and then compounds the error by not using Masculine & Feminine. Who has a marital status of Other? Apparently they are only interested in your children if you are Married. Funny there's no "Do I want to avoid all market research: Yes/No". It's too depressing.

Still, it's free, unlimited, decently quick, increasingly available and when I get an iPhone, I'm hoping for the best but I expect to need 3G cellular data service as well for the majority of time when I'm out of range.