SINGAPORE called on Tuesday for bids to build the country's next-generation broadband network, offering bidders grants as much as S$750 million.

The winning bidder would have to be structurally separate from the city-state's telecommunication and Internet operators.

This means that the country's dominant telecom firms Singapore Telecommunications and StarHub will have to create separate entities in order to bid for the project, called the Next Generation National Broadband Network.

'If necessary, the government is also prepared to consider legislation to achieve effective open access for downstream operators in the next-generation broadband market,' Dr Lee Boon Yang, Singapore's Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, told a media briefing on Tuesday.

The plan will link homes, schools and offices in the city-state to a high speed Internet system.

Dr Lee said that telecom and Internet service providers would not be allowed to have effective control over the network infrastructure, which is expected to be ready by 2015, in order to ensure open access.

The government will award the winning bid by September next year, based on criteria including the proposed quality of the network and other business plans. It will offer a grant of up to S$750 million ($521 million) to help build the network.

It will request proposals for network operators in the second quarter next year.

Siemens AG, Europe's biggest engineering company, and Alcatel-Lucent, are among 12 companies and groups have been pre-qualified to build the so-called Next Generation National Broadband Network. -- REUTERS