I recently were given a laptop by my ISP(that’s Starhub) for signing a 30 month contract for their Internet broadband service (Cable). Yes, that’s a 30 month contract I am stuck with. But anyhow, I got a laptop in return which I can bring around whenever I need to. Well, the laptop is not really a good piece of hardware, the keyboard is the worst I have ever seen with it’s keys falling all over the place. Very cheap and flimsy construction.

Ok, so armed with this laptop, I went around Singapore to test out the Singapore’s free wireless service. The three service providers are Singtel, Qmax and IcellNetworks. First I tried Toa Payoh Central’s McDonalds. The signal strength was excellent but somehow I faced a numer of disconnections. I had to login once every one hour or so. But the speeds I experienced was acceptable. I used both QMax and Icellnetworks. I don’t have the Singtel userid and password. You need to sign up with the three service provider first before you can login. It seemed to me that QMax is more stable than ICell. But I am nitpicking here. I stayed there for about 3 hours doing some work (which involved the Internet). Later, I tried Yishun. I went to the Starbucks at Northpoint. Again the connection there was great but I didn’t stay for long to test everything - coffee was too expensive.

A few days later, I went to Tampines Point and ate at McDonalds. As usual, I tried the Wireless service there too. No problems. The signal was excellent and I stayed connected for several hours. However, I discovered that the speeds were intermittent. Sometimes it would be fast and sometimes it will slow to a crawl. But at least I stayed connected. I believed that I stayed for 3 hours before going to Long John Silvers. Yes, no problem with the connection there either. I am quite impressed with this free Wireless service.

This should work out very well if they maintain the same service. Do note that this free service is for three years and will end somewhere in 2009. Why? I don’t know, perhaps the Singapore government think that nobody will be using Wireless anymore in 2009. They predicted we will all be using a whooping “high-speed” 28.8Kbps fax modem by then. Anyway, I can say that if you are planning to do some work while you are outside the office, you can quite safely depend on this service.