ViewQwest ups the ante to 2Gbps, slashes price for 1Gbps

Singapore

VIEWQWEST is set to offer Singapore's fastest home fibre broadband connection at 2 gigabits per second (Gbps) early next year, even as it slashes the price on an existing plan in a bid for a bigger chunk of the residential market.

At 2Gbps, its offering is the first of its kind in the world outside Japan, it said on Wednesday.

The fastest home fibre broadband speed in Singapore now tops out at 1Gbps.

ViewQwest, which has yet to revealed its pricing, is running "limited trials" with a small group of customers.

Its chief executive Vignesa Moorthy said: "When we're ready to offer it commercially, we will price it based on the cost of bandwidth at the time."

What ViewQwest can offer immediately, however, are two new broadband bundle contracts launched on Wednesday - its 600Mbps plan for a monthly fee of S$65 and its 1,000Mbps (1Gbps) plan for S$89.95 a month. The 600Mbps one essentially doubles the speed of ViewQwest's now-discontinued 300Mbps plan - for the same price.

The 1,000Mbps plan doubles the speed of a now-discontinued 500Mbps plan for S$89.95 a month, and is a big discount from the S$149.95 which the current 1,000Mbps package costs.

The new plans come with the features ViewQwest was already offering before its pricing rejig, such as three months of free subscription to Freedom VPN (virtual private network) and ViewQwest TV, among other things.

Existing 300Mbps and 500Mbps ViewQwest users will get their speeds bumped up to 600Mbps and 1,000Mbps respectively without the need to recontract, Mr Moorthy said.

However, subscribers now paying S$149.95 a month for the 1,000Mbps plan will need to recontract in order for the S$89.95 monthly fee to apply.

The speed-upgrading started on Wednesday, and is expected to be done by year-end.

Corporate customers now make up 70 per cent of ViewQwest's revenue. In terms of the residential market, however, the company reckons it has the smallest share among its peers. Its repricing and 2Gbps offering are attempts at making inroads into this market.

Mr Moorthy said: "We've never really addressed the mass market of consumers, so I think with the positioning now ... we're trying to address the larger market."

ViewQwest's 1,000Mbps offering is still more expensive than some of its rivals' for now: M1's 1Gbps plan costs S$49 a month, MyRepublic's 1 Gbps Ultra plan is pegged at S$49.99 a month and SingTel's Unlimited Fibre plan, which offers speeds of up to 1Gbps, goes for S$69.90 a month.

Mr Moorthy said: "Even with ... providers claiming to offer 1Gbps at significantly lower prices, we still have people signing up for our 1Gbps plan at S$149.95. People know...that we do deliver."

In any case, pricing for the rest of the industry remains fluid. While MyRepublic has a "usual price" of S$89 and S$99 a month for its two 1Gbps plans after a customer's 24-month contract ends, it told The Business Times on Wednesday that it is likely to lower these prices before 2016. It also has product announcements coming up in the next few months, it said.

Meanwhile, SingTel's Unlimited Fibre price is "for a limited period only", its website announced, and M1's plan will cost S$99 a month once its promotion ends, at an unspecified date.

StarHub, which said in September that it was working on a new 1Gbps offer, told BT that it was now finalising this home broadband package, details of which would be unveiled soon.

On the 2Gbps front, a StarHub spokeswoman said: "We are monitoring this industry development. Based on the strong take-up of our HomeHub and Dual Broadband plans, customers are telling us that bandwidth alone is not everything. They also cherish the total value offered by such hubbing bundles."

In response to queries about plans for 2Gbps connections or other changes to its offerings, an M1 spokesman said: "We continually enhance our products and services to meet our customers' needs, taking into consideration technology developments and market demand."

SingTel, which said that its Unlimited Fibre plan has been "very popular" with its tech-savvy customers, said it will "continue to provide increasingly higher speeds in line with technology and customer needs".

For now, ViewQwest's Mr Moorthy believes that consumers taking up the 2Gbps plan will be households with multiple users trying to do different things - like running BitTorrent downloads and streaming videos - at the same time.

The race for greater speeds is set to heat up.

MyRepublic announced on Wednesday that it had started testing 2Gbps to homes, and was also looking at technology upgrades that can support up to 10Gbps for households.