First Singapore home gets next-gen fiber

SINGAPORE--The first home has been successfully connected to the fiber infrastructure of the next-generation national broadband network (NBN), OpenNet announced Wednesday.

The NBN network company said at a ceremony, it has connected the first home to the planned NBN's dark fiber, which OpenNet has started laying out since April this year.

This goes toward the 5 percent targeted rollout of the fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network which OpenNet announced earlier in June.

So far, 32,000 homes and 500 non-residential buildings have been outfitted with fiber, and OpenNet expects installation to accelerate in the coming months.

OpenNet CEO Tan Kah-Rhu said at present, the company has 1,200 subcontracted workers working on installation, and expects to meet its previously-set target of 15 percent completion by the end of this year and 60 percent by the end of next year.

Some 1.1 million households are set to get wired up over the next three years, with access speeds of up to 1Gbps.

While residents may be wired up to the fiber layer, they will not get connectivity until the active infrastructure--to be built and run by operating company, Nucleus Connect--is turned on. This is scheduled to take place in April next year.

The final layer of providers, the retail service providers (RSPs), will sell services directly to consumers from mid-2010, the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore previously announced.

The NBN is expected to bring speeds of over 1Gbps to users, and is expected to be available across the island by 2012.