Broadband Upsell Madness

Broadband in Singapore has gone crazy. ISPs don’t want to sell you what you actually need. They want to upsell you to something faster, shinier, and mostly pointless for most homes.

It used to be that Gigabit Ethernet broadband was the gold standard. These days, try looking for a plain no-frills 1 Gbps broadband service is very difficult — non-existent, buried, or deliberately made unattractive. Faster than 1 Gbps is practically pointless for most users, but we’re forced to get faster bandwidth that we don’t need.

I know my network, I know how to choose my service provider, and I know how to choose the right broadband service. However, there are many consumers who don’t know — they don’t know how much bandwidth is enough for them, and they don’t know how to choose between the myriad of broadband plans. Our ISPs are taking advantage of the less tech-savvy customers by selling them services they don’t need.

Take my parents, for example. Like others who have grown-up children with their own families, they live on their own. Netflix and YouTube are part of their daily lives, which is about the most demanding as their Internet usage gets. Their other activities like reading news, email, and social media, have next-to-nothing in terms of bandwidth requirements.

My dad’s ISP told him when his contract was up that there is no more 1 Gbps broadband, and he needs to upgrade. “Needs to” likely because you get very “poor value” on the grandfathered plan. Now, instead of recommending the next most basic service which is a 3 Gbps service, they sold him 10 Gbps because it was their best recommendation.

You’d wonder, did they mean the best for the customer or best for the ISP?

I cannot understand how 10 Gbps could ever have been in my dad’s best interest given the kind of Internet use he has. The most taxing video streaming usage doesn’t even require anywhere that much bandwidth.

In case you thought video streaming needs lots of bandwidth, maybe particularly so if many people at home streams video simultaneously, let me dispel this myth right now. Nextflix’s own recommendation, which means “for best experience”, is 5 Mbps for Full HD (1080p) video, and 15 Mbps for Ultra HD (4K) video. YouTube recommends 5 Mbps and 20 Mbps for Full HD and Ultra HD respectively. Even you have 20 people at home, each one of them watching 4K video at the same time, you’d still be using less than half the capacity of a 1 Gbps connection!

So, please understand this, 1 Gbps is plentiful for many people.

I was quite surprised to learn that my dad’s incumbent ISP did not offer 1 Gbps broadband anymore. I checked, and yeah, that was true. I had also noticed that my own ISP did not offer 1 Gbps. The slowest was 3 Gbps.

I did a quick market survey, and to my horror, it is true that 1 Gbps is on the verge of death. There are only 2 ISPs left offering the basic 1 Gbps service — SingTel and M1. (But when M1 being bought out by Simba, I suppose there is likely to disappear too!)

According to the very helpful broadband comparison at MoneySmart, I have this quick summary table below:

Broadband Speed	# of ISP
1 Gbps	2
2 Gbps	1
3 Gbps	4
5 Gbps	1
10 Gbps	5

(Note: MoneySmart didn’t include 10 Gbps from SingTel, but since I’m aware SingTel does offer that, I’ve updated the numbers to reflect the correct number.)

Quite evidently, our ISPs are far keener to sell 10 Gbps broadband.

The issue isn’t that 10 Gbps broadband exists. It’s that ISPs are systematically removing the affordable, sensible options. 1 Gbps is great for most people, but this option is being killed off, because it’s harder to upsell customers to faster speeds when this option continues to be available.

There will always be enthusiasts, techies, prosumers, and other niche cashes who want 10 Gbps broadband. That’s good for them, both consumers and the ISPs.

So here’s the takeaway: know your needs and don’t let ISPs decide for you what you need. The only real choices these days are between 3 Gbps and 10 Gbps, and even 3 Gbps is far more than enough for most people.

Singapore’s broadband market has been one of the most competitive and affordable in the world. But if we let ISPs normalise this upsell game, we’ll end up paying more for no real benefit.