News
News Categories

ViewQwest announces 2Gbps fiber broadband; drops price of 1Gbps plan to S$89.95 per month

By Ng Chong Seng - on 12 Nov 2014, 4:59pm

ViewQwest announces 2Gbps fiber broadband; drops price of 1Gbps plan to S$89.95 per month

ViewQwest is the only ISP outside of Japan to offer 2Gbps fiber broadband.

Remember So-net? Last year, the Japanese ISP made headlines when it launched its ‘Nuro’ 2Gbps fiber broadband plan, which remains today the world’s fastest home Internet. Well, it now has at least met its match, and it comes from none other than Singapore’s ViewQwest, who today announced its intention to offer a 2Gbps fiber broadband plan soon.

Limited trial for ViewQwest’s 2Gbps fiber broadband will take place from now till end of this year, among existing ViewQwest users that the company will select. ViewQwest hopes to iron out any bumps quickly and roll out the service commercially as early as 1Q 2015. While pricing for this 2Gbps has yet to be decided, we won’t be surprised if it’s more than the S$89.95 per month that the company is now offering for its 1Gbps plan. For what it’s worth, while So-net’s 2Gbps plan costs US$51 per month, the Japanese ISP collects a pretty hefty installation fee.

For those interested in the nitty-gritty, know that ViewQwest’s 2Gbps plan uses the current GPON (Gigabit-capable Passive Optics Networks) standard, and offers 2Gbps downstream speed and 1Gbps upstream speed. The 2Gbps can be delivered over one fiber cable from the termination point to the current Zhone 2426 ONT/router that ViewQwest provides to its subscribers, so no change of ONT is required. From then on though, the config will be a little different depending how you want to use the 2Gbps bandwidth.

From the Zhone ONT to a MikroTik router and then to two NICs, ViewQwest showed us it's possible to get 2Gbps to one computer.

To pipe all the bandwidth to a PC, one way is to bond two gigabit NICs (network interface cards) on the PC. Since the Zhone 2426 has four gigabit Ethernet ports, two ports will be used. The extra step is that the two connections will have to go to a router first (ViewQwest uses this MikroTik router in its demo) before going to the PC. This additional router isn’t necessary if you just wish to share the bandwidth with multiple devices. For that, simply connect each device to each of the gigabit Ethernet ports on the Zhone ONT.

Now, if you want to see this 2Gbps fiber broadband in action, you can do so at the ViewQwest booth during the upcoming Sitex, which is taking place from 27th to 30th of this month at the Singapore Expo.

 

New price plans: 600 & 1,000Mbps

ViewQwest is also taking the opportunity to streamline its existing fiber broadband contract bundles. In a nutshell, the S$65/month 300Mbps and S$89.95/month 500Mbps bundles are now gone, and in their place is a 600Mbps plan that costs S$65/month. The 1Gbps plan also sees a drop in price from S$149.95/month to S$89.95/month.

The new plans will be available from today, November 12, 2014. Existing 300 and 500Mbps subscribers will see their speeds automatically bumped to 600Mbps. That said, since ViewQwest doesn't downward-adjust what you're paying currently, if you're now paying more than S$65 per month for your plan, it makes sense to do a re-contract.

(Screengrab from ViewQwest's website.)

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.