Singapore to have nationwide WiFi by year's end

From the sound of things it would seem the island nation of Singapore will soon be the latest country to get the 802.11 treatment, having all of its near 700 square kilometers blanketed in WiFi. That would make Singapore the third nation that we know of to completely covered, joining Mauritius and Macedonia, with Estonia not far behind. A government report, "Intelligent Nation 2015," already notes that Singapore currently averages one WiFi hotspot for every square kilometer, so combined with upcoming WiMax technology, Singapore is aiming to be one ginormous hotspot by the end of the year. That's a pretty ambitious project, mind you, even for a country as well off as Singapore. Of course, this report also states (no joke), that they'll have 4G cell phones, "Fibre to the Home," the "Semantic World Wide Web," and "Embedded and Wearable Computers" by 2015, which by our estimation would make them among the most advanced civilzations around. If they do manage any of those, we may just have to open up an Engadget Singapore bureau pretty soon since that FIOS certainly ain't getting hooked up in our cribs any time soon.

[Via CNET]

[CyBeR @ Aug 30th 2006 6:32AM]

Granted te wearable computers are a bit of a long shot, but if we don't have the rest going in 2015 we're doing something wrong.

[Yong Hwee @ Aug 30th 2006 7:02AM]

Honestly, I'm quite excited at the prospect of surfing wirelessly on the bus/train. I wonder what's the pricing like? It's just a matter of time before other countries start offering WI-Max but I guess we're lucky because we're small.

[Shockr @ Sep 3rd 2006 9:34AM]

Fibre to the Home aka Fibre to the Building in China. This isn't that new. I've had fibre to the building for a few years now.

[JP @ Aug 30th 2006 8:04AM]

How fitting is that we dump on FIOS then right below there is an ad for it.

[Jeff @ Aug 30th 2006 7:39AM]

This is cool and all, but a little perspective: the "nation" of Singapore is half the physical size of New York City, which itself is half the physical size of Los Angeles. So this is not a big area we're talking about. Probably about the size of Chicago.

Much, much harder to wire up (or unwire up, as it were) a larger area, and an area that's not 100% urban.

[Alvin Ng @ Aug 31st 2006 6:50AM]

Maybe I could be Chief Editor of Engadget Singapore? Haha! WiMax is coming real soon, but for the wearable part I don't think I'll see anyone with it in the near future.

[Jerrick @ Aug 30th 2006 9:20AM]

Hey! I wanna be on the engadget singapore bureau! Pick Me , Pick Me! I can use Uber l33t speak, know alot about techonology, (core 2 duo, hypertransport, dual core, Mac) Damn I think i probably just wrote a comment that's gonna earn me flames. Oh well. Have pity on a poor soul:)

[Leon Huang @ Aug 30th 2006 9:42AM]

Self plug: And Engadget should hire me for Engadget Singapore, as I'm already running a mildly successful gadget blog. :P

[Mikhail @ Aug 30th 2006 12:01PM]

It's not "Information Nation 2015", rather, it is Intelligent Nation 2015 (or iN2015, as Singaporeans call it for short.)

[Cyrus Farivar @ Aug 30th 2006 12:02PM]

Fixed. Thanks for looking out for us!

[Kyo @ Aug 30th 2006 12:08PM]

Pick me! Working in Singapore now as an expat - this place rocks! Wi-fi all over the nation? By the end of this year? Bring it on!!! (heck, was this in the newspaper - reading that PDF didn't mention much about it).

[KH Toh @ Aug 30th 2006 10:56PM]

Anticipate great pleasure and convenient when surfing the internet whenever we are.

[insom @ Aug 31st 2006 12:21PM]

looks like i'm a long way down the list for 'hands in the air' for engadget singapore but stick me down for it too - should have a team by now!

[Shawn Lee @ Sep 9th 2006 10:35PM]

Wouldn't mind being on the Engadget Singapore team too ;)