Ascendas-Singbridge and M1 have completed Ascendas-Singbridge’s first Fibre Ready Scheme (FRS) installation at Ascent, a 7-storey integrated business park, retail, and food and beverage development situated along Singapore Science Park.
As Ascendas-Singbridge’s FRS partner, M1 will install and enhance the necessary telecommunication and fiber infrastructure at 70 commercial buildings under Ascendas-Singbridge’s portfolio in Singapore.
By 2018, the tenants at these commercial buildings are expected to be able to benefit significantly from the enhanced infrastructure, which would allow expedient access to fiber broadband services.
This is Singapore’s biggest commercial deployment under the FRS, a program launched in 2014 by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) as part of a S$200-million funding to help owners of commercial buildings enhance their buildings’ telecommunication infrastructure.
The scheme endeavours to facilitate easy and speedy provisioning of fiber broadband connectivity to the building’s tenants with any provider of their choice. A one-time subsidy is granted to defray the costs for the building owners to install and upgrade open access fiber connectivity infrastructures.
Prior to the introduction of the FRS, fiber service providers that sign up a customer in a commercial building would typically engage a contractor to provision the necessary fiber assets and equipment on an individual, ad-hoc basis.
With the FRS, besides making fiber services more accessible to businesses, such a centrally-managed one-time deployment model would also minimize disruption to business and building operations, and reduces future maintenance and operational complexities.
With the addition of Ascendas-Singbridge’s 70 buildings, close to 200 buildings have applied for FRS to date,” said Khoong Hock Yun, assistant CEO of the Infocomm Media Development Authority. “We would strongly encourage more commercial building developers and owners to leverage on the FRS to enhance and future-proof its buildings’ fiber infrastructure before the program and funding ends in March 2018."