[2024 Edition] Complete Guide To Choosing The Best Broadband Plan For Your Home

Due to changing work trends and a wider adoption of working from home (WFH), having a good home broadband plan has gone from a nice-to-have to a must-have for many households.

When it comes to deciding the best broadband plan for our home, there are 7 main players in the market to consider.

When applying for a home broadband service, there are additional fees that we may be charged, outside of our monthly subscription.

NLT Service Activation Fee: We have to pay $61.04 for the NetLink Trust (NLT) Service Activation fee for every new fibre port activation. This is typically for new customers or customers that moved homes, as it applies for every new activation. Customers who re-contract (from the same address) should not have to pay this fee.

Termination Point Installation Fee: For homes that do not already have a termination point, we will have to fork out an additional sum for NetLink Trust to carry out this one-time installation work. For HDB and private high-rise apartments, this is charged at $182.03, while for landed properties, it is $333.54. Again, this typically only applies to someone who has moved recently as we very likely already have home internet broadband.

Relocation, repair and replacement & removal charge: For homes that require additional work due to changing the location of a point or maintenance, there is a $184.21 fee and $336.81 for HDB and landed properties respectively.

Additional Fibre Cable Run: For homes that might have peculiarly installed connection points, an additional installation of fibre cable might be required. Do note that there is an added $1.09 per additional 5 metre-block beyond 15m for buildings fitted with end-to-end NetLink Trust’s fibre infrastructure and $1.09 per additional 5 metre-block beyond 25m for buildings fitted with building owner/building developer’s network

When choosing which home broadband plan to subscribe to, we should also ask ourselves two simple questions:

Contract Duration: No-contract, 12-month contract or 24-month contract?

Maximum Speed: 500Mbps, 1Gbps, 2Gbps, or 10Gbps?

Read Also: [Cheatsheet] The Best SIM-Only Plans in Singapore

No-Contract Home Fibre Broadband Plans

Unlike the prevalence of no-contract mobile plans in Singapore, there aren’t as many no-contract options with home fibre broadband plans.

Best No-Contract Plan

ViewQwest offers a no-contract plan at $58.99. It also gives free modem rental worth $269.97. Note that while this is technically a no-contract plan, ViewQwest will charge a penalty for termination within the first three months.

Alternatively, you could also opt for MyRepublic which offers a no-contract plan at $61.50. It offers a free home phone line and a $150 worth of new router discount.

Read Also: 3 Types Of Online Threats That You Can’t Ignore, And Why Protecting Yourself Starts With More Secure Home Broadband 

Who Should Get A No-Contract Home Broadband Plan?

If we do not want to get locked into the service provider for 12 or 24 months, especially if we expect to change our residence or move out of Singapore soon, it could make sense to go with a no-contract plan. Once we get locked into a contract, cancellation charges are hefty and there is nothing we can do about it.

The main downsides are a monthly subscription, as well as having to pay for router and other installation charges (which are typically free for 12- or 24-month contracts).

12-Month Contract Home Fibre Broadband Plans

While the 24-month plan is most common, there are a few internet service providers that offer a shorter 12-month home fibre broadband plan.

Best 12-Month Contract Home Broadband Plan

If you have 1-2 people in the household, a 500Mbps plan might be sufficient. Currently, only M1 provides a 500Mbps plan at $40.65. Note that this does not include a router.

For households with up to 4 people, a 1Gbps plan or higher is preferable. In this regard, WhizzComms and Simba are the cheapest, offering 2.5Gbps at $21.80 per month. Followed by M1 and MyRepublic, which offer a 1Gbps plan at $50.84 and $50.99, respectively. Though these plans cost more than twice as much, it’s important to also consider the customer service level and track record of the service provider.

Among these providers, it may be preferable to get MyRepublic for a few reasons. Firstly, you get a $150 discount on a new router purchased from them. This is not just $150 in value, but also offers versatility regarding which router you choose for your home. This is in contrast to no router from the other service providers. Secondly, MyRepublic gives free Static IP, whereas you have to jump through several hoops to get it activated on M1 and StarHub and you have to pay for it. This might not be very important for non-gamers, but for a gamer, you might find yourself unable to forward ports or host sessions for some games if you do not have a static IP.

Read Also: 4 Smart Home Devices That Give You Greater Control And Convenience (And Possibly Astound Your Family And Friends)

Who Should Get A 12-Month Contract Plan?

12-month contracts offer a middle ground for those who don’t want to be locked into for 24 months, but yet want to enjoy a slightly better rate for the home broadband.

These plans can be suitable for those who are living on rent. If we may cancel our subscription in the near term, either because of shifting houses or moving abroad, 12-month contracts would likely charge a lower fee for early termination.

24-Month Contract Home Fibre Broadband Plans

This will be the most extensive comparison as all the internet service providers offer 24-month home fibre broadband plans at various speeds.

Best 24-Month Contract Plan

The 24-month contract plans are less expensive than the 12-month contract plans. This tells us that internet service providers value longer-term customers.

Comparing the 1Gbps plans, the cheapest is offered by MyRepublic for its no-frills plan at $36.99 (U.P. $38.99) per month. Another option is Starhub’s 1Gbps plans at $38.24 per month, which you can choose between the WIFI 5 or WIFI 6 routers. While only M1 offers a 500Mbps plan at $30.45 per month, it also has multiple bundle plans tied to different products, such as Apple iPad and Android Smart TV for its 1Gbps plan.

For the 2Gbps speed, MyRepublic‘s no-frills plan at $47.99 (U.P. $59.99) per month is the cheapest. Their plans come with WIFI 6 routers (and offer bundled plans with Prism products) and a free home phone line. The second lowest plan is offered by ViewQwest for its 2.5Gbps plan at $52.98 per month, which is around $6 more for an additional 500Gbps of internet speed. For higher monthly price plans, Singtel and Starhub offer bundles that include high-speed routers and TV packages that are discounted in the bundle, making them quite worth it if you watch these programs.

Finally, if you want high-speed plans, you can choose between Singtel’s enhanced 10Gbps plan at $86, Starhub’s UltraSpeed at $69.95, and MyRepublic’s 10Gbps HyperSpeed plan at $59.99. Most normal people will not come anywhere close to utilising 1Gbps on their own in their average internet usage, so even individuals with extremely heavy internet usage will not find this worth it. However, considering that this plan offers 5 times the bandwidth for only slightly more than twice the price of a 1Gbps, families living in multi-generational households may want to seriously consider this plan over a 2Gbps plan, especially if your household consists of more than 10 active internet users/ devices.

Who Should Get A 24-Month Contract Plan?

Anyone who wants to subscribe to a home broadband plan should consider signing up for the 24-month contract plan. They offer the best value for money on their contracts, as well as waive certain installation service fees. 24-month contract plans are also frequently bundled with other services, devices and promotions that may offer more value if you are already intending to purchase the bundled services or devices separately.

In general, if you have your own home and are not considering a change of residence anytime soon, a 24-month contract offers the best value. However, you will need to plan for this carefully because choosing the wrong plan will mean being unable to change for 2 years. This largely depends on the number of active internet users living in your household.

Fortunately for most people, this number does not change so readily, perhaps the only people who might have to pay attention are those who have adult children who may be moving out, in which case you already have an internet plan and it may be preferable to avoid recontracting so that you can downgrade without penalties when your children move out.

Finally, before choosing which ISP’s services to use, it also pays to research the reliability of the ISP’s services. You can be sure that disgruntled users will take to the interwebs to complain if a certain ISP has regularly failed them. Since the internet is so integral in our lives nowadays, having outages, especially frequent outages can be incredibly frustrating, so it’s probably best to avoid ISPs that have frequent outages.

Read Also: Online Video Subscription Services: Netflix VS Amazon Prime Video VS Viu Premium VS Disney+ VS HBO Go

Is a “Gaming” plan worth it?

Most ISPs have a “Gaming” or “Gamer” version of their broadband plan which features ultra-low latency while charging anywhere between $10-20 more per month. For most other internet usage, you will not notice any difference, however, latency governs how quickly data packets are sent from your computer to the server, and if the latency gets too large, your gaming experience may be affected since your opponent has that few milliseconds of extra time to shoot you.

Most internet latency can be eliminated with the use of the right ethernet cables as well as a good router. For instance, WiFi adds a ton of latency because your data needs to be successfully beamed through the airwaves, so if you are trying to game on a WiFi network, or if you are not using a high-spec router, your latency is going to be higher than whatever latency advantage you might get from your ISP.

Given that regular home setups with non-“gamer” plans can be tuned to get a ping of 5ms or below, the extra $10-20 per month does seem like a rather steep price to pay for the latency upgrade. However, if your internet usage is based heavily on gaming and if you can feel the difference enough to regularly irritate you, that extra $10-20 might just be worth spending.

This article was last published on 28 October 2020 and updated with the latest 2024 prices. 

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