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Singapore Telecommunications
The Singaporean government, which had inherited a
fairly good
telecommunications system from the British at
independence,
assigned telecommunications a high priority in economic
planning.
By the late 1980s, Singapore had one of the world's most
advanced
telecommunications infrastructures, developed under the
guidance of
Telecoms, a statutory board. Its mission was to provide
high
quality communications for domestic and international
requirements,
and to serve the business community as well as the public.
Telecoms
offered a comprehensive range of products and services at
rates
among the lowest in the world. Information services
accounted for
an estimated 2 percent of Singapore's GDP in 1988.
Chartered to function commercially, Telecoms received
no
subsidies. Aside from an initial loan, Telecoms paid for
its
capital needs out of its earnings. In lieu of taxes, it
made an
annual payment to the Treasury comparable to a business
tax. This
financial autonomy was a major factor in Telecom's ability
to
respond to user demand. During the early 1980s, as the
drive for
high technology got underway, Telecom's capital budget
rose by 20
to 30 percent a year, the highest growth of any public
agency in
Singapore. Although the rate of increase dropped to about
15 to 20
percent in the late 1980s, the capital budget remained
high and
continued to increase.
Telecoms offered a large and growing number of
services,
including radio paging, mobile phones, facsimile,
electronic mail,
and telepac, a system for linking computers locally and
internationally. By 1987 Singapore's domestic telephone
network was
completely push-button, and all twenty-six telephone
exchanges were
linked by an optical fiber network. The country had more
than 1.2
million telephones in 1988, or 48.5 telephones for every
100
Singaporeans, providing virtually 100 percent coverage in
homes and
offices.
Satellite links with the world were provided by
satellite earth
stations at Bukit Timah and on Sentosa Island. Submarine
cables
connected Singapore to all of its ASEAN neighbors except
Brunei,
which was scheduled to be linked with Singapore by
fiber-optic
cable in 1991. In 1988 Singapore installed the region's
first
dedicated digital data network, providing up to two mega
bits per
second (Mbps) high-speed data transmission and voice
communications. Intelsat Business Service was available
for a wide
range of applications, including corporate data
communications,
financial services, and remote printing via satellite. A
video
conferencing service also was offered by 1988.
Data as of December 1989
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