I REFER to the letter by SingTel's Mr Peter Heng, 'Broadband 'speed race'? No real need for one' (ST, July 24).

In spite of Mr Heng's assertion that 'any speed beyond 20Mbps today cannot be feasibly used by individual customers', our research indicates that many homes in Singapore now use multiple computers to access the Internet simultaneously over a single connection.

It is also very common for some users to have multiple, concurrent applications and downloads.

Therefore, there will always be a clear, present need for broadband speeds (including beyond 20Mbps) that offer better performance to each user in a home network.

We believe this is also why the global broadband industry is evolving the home networking technology to the newer IEEE802.11n standard, such that consumers will be able to enjoy these higher speeds wirelessly.

According to the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore's online publication, Consumer Information On Residential Broadband Services In Singapore (http://www.ida.gov.sg/Publications/20061213184450.aspx), with higher broadband speeds consumers enjoy better value and benefit more from multiple Internet connections over a single broadband service, as well as a single Internet connection that supports several concurrent online applications.

We agree with Mr Heng that Internet content for consumers in Singapore is largely hosted overseas but we wish to highlight that the nature of the public Internet is such that it will always be a shared infrastructure, and the access is only as good as the weakest and slowest link. StarHub ensures that the weakest link is never within the local-access network.

StarHub ensures there is sufficient bandwidth capacity within the network to deliver the speeds that our customers are paying for. Our cable broadband service, with the new state-of-the-art channel-bonding technology, deployed over fibre-optic and coaxial cables, delivers higher broadband speeds of up to 100Mbps nationwide. No other country in the world offers these speeds to households.

In addition, our cable broadband network uses dedicated frequencies/channels for the individual delivery of video, data and voice services without compromising quality.

Jeannie Ong (Ms)
Head
Corporate Communications & Investor Relations
StarHub