OpenNet and Fibre Optic Network

So now Fibre Optic is out but should you really upgrade?

Many people called the Fibre Optic Network as OpenNet but they are wrong. OpenNet is just a company that are the one that is building the Fibre Optic network in Singapore. So what is so good about Fibre Optic?

Fibre Optic are lines that are like your network cable, but they are made of fibre optic instead of copper.

Source: Broadband-finder.co.uk

Thus this allow the signal to be transmitted over long distance without being weaken as signals are transmitted over by reflection of the lights within the fibre optic. It is also capable of transmitting data at the speed in Gigabits. But do you really need it?

This is a scenario, for example you sign up for the slowest fibre optic from a ISP. Which gives you a speed of 150Mbps (Megabits, NOT Megabytes). Meaning you can download your videos etc at the speed of 18.75 (MBps)Megabytes per second.

But there are several factor that you may need to consider (for individual users only):

1. The max speed that your local lan is 100Mbps, thus there is a wastage of 50Mbps.

2. The max speed of most wifi router (G standard) is only going at 54Mbps. (If you have excellent signal)

3. Even if you have a N standard wifi gateway(theoretical speed of 300Mpbs), you only get around 150 Mbps. More info here.

4. Most website content are so light(normal web surfing or project work) that even if you are on 3Mbps broadband, you already do not see much delay.

5. Some website servers have their own upload limit, they could not even deliver you the content to the speed of your download.

6. Unless you have many users at home, download lots of stuff, running a server you do not need to get fibre optic. A high speed broadband would be more than sufficient.

Do take note that Mbps and MBps are 2 different units.