Urban and business space solutions provider Ascendas-Singbridge's first Fibre Ready Scheme (FRS) installation was completed on Thursday at Ascent, a seven-storey integrated business park, retail, and food and beverage development at Singapore Science Park.

Ascendas-Singbridge has appointed telco M1 as its corporate FRS partner. Under the agreement, M1 will install and enhance the necessary telecommunication and fibre infrastructure at 70 commercial buildings under Ascendas-Singbridge's portfolio in Singapore.

By 2018, the tenants at these commercial buildings are expected to be able to benefit significantly from the enhanced infrastructure, which would allow easier access to fibre broadband services.

This is Singapore's biggest commercial deployment under the FRS, a programme launched in 2014 by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) as part of a S$200 million funding to help owners of commercial buildings enhance their buildings' telecommunication infrastructure.

The scheme facilitates easy and speedy provisioning of fibre broadband connectivity to the building's tenants with any provider of their choice. Under the scheme, a one-time subsidy is granted to defray the costs for the building owners to install and upgrade open access fibre connectivity infrastructure.

Prior to the introduction of the FRS, fibre service providers that signed up a customer in a commercial building would typically engage a contractor to provide the necessary fibre assets and equipment on an individual, ad hoc basis. With the FRS, besides making fibre services more accessible to businesses, such a centrally-managed one-time deployment model is expected to minimise disruption to business and building operations, and reduce future maintenance and operational complexities.

Khoong Hock Yun, IMDA's assistant chief executive, said that the Ascendas-Singbridge, M1 partnership would "greatly enhance" businesses' open access to fibre broadband services. He added: "With the addition of Ascendas-Singbridge's 70 buildings, close to 200 buildings have applied for FRS to date.

"We would strongly encourage more commercial building developers and owners to leverage on the FRS to enhance and future-proof its buildings' fibre infrastructure before the programme and funding ends in March 2018."