SingTel's 300Mbps 4G LTE-A network expands to cover over 50% of the island
Singtel's 300Mbps 4G LTE-A network expands to cover over 50% of the island
Having established island-wide 4G LTE coverage since mid-2013, SingTel went on to announce their 300Mbps 4G LTE-Advanced service roll out in late May this year. It was however only available at Singapore Expo with plans to cover half of the island by end of the year. Even at Singapore Expo, you could only enjoy that throughput with Huawei's E5786 MiFi dongle to support such a service for hot-spot needs because there was no other handheld device that supported LTE-Advanced network's data throughput at that point of time.
Today, Singtel updated us that their LTE-A network covers more than half of Singapore and has been working with its mobile network equipment provider, Ericsson, to rapidly expand its 4G LTE-Advanced network across Singapore. LTE-Advanced (or LTE-A), is capable of delivering double the data speeds of existing 4G LTE services that top out at 150Mbps.
Street level coverage for LTE-A now extends to more than 55% of the island, including areas such as Orchard, the CBD, Shenton Way, City Hall, Ang Mo Kio, Tampines, Jurong, Telok Blangah and Woodlands as this outdoor network coverage diagram shows:-
Indoor coverage is currently available at 29 busy locations such as Plaza Singapura, Bugis Junction, Suntec City, Raffles City, Tampines Mall and Changi Airport. The full list is as follows and is accurate as of the time of publishing:-
- Sim Lim Square
- Plaza Singapura
- Millenia Walk
- Capital Tower
- Bugis Junction
- Funan Digitalife Mall
- Suntec City Mall
- Suntec City Convention
- Suntec City Tower 1
- Suntec City Tower 2
- Suntec City Tower 5
- Tung Centre
- Singapore Expo
- Wisma Atria Shopping Centre
- Far East Plaza
- Lucky Plaza
- Parkway Parade
- Peoples Park Centre
- Century Square
- Changi Airport T1
- Changi Airport T2
- Raffles City
- Junction 8
- Tampines Mall
- Mustafa Centre
- Hougang Mall
- City Plaza
- Lot1 Shopping Mall
- Income at Raffles
Mr Tay Yeow Lian, SingTel’s Managing Director of Networks, said "We have accelerated our network roll out programme and are on track to achieve nationwide outdoor coverage by the first quarter of 2015."
The rate of coverage and deployment is certainly faster than expected and this bodes well for advanced smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S5 4G+ that's coming to Singapore on the 23rd of August and is able to take advantage of LTE-Advanced networks. Others like the Samsung Alpha 4G+ will be available sometime in September, while phones like the LG G3 LTE-A might see a chance to be made available in the near future too.
Meanwhile, M1 and StarHub have announced that they are upgrading their networks to progressively support LTE-Advanced data connectivity. As pointed out in our earlier news piece, M1's 4G network has already been upgraded in selective locations like Orchard and Jurong, while StarHub responded that they expect to complete their network upgrade later this year.