Late at night. But this is too cool a news to resist blogging at this hour. Read a news on Brand Republic Asia about IDA Singapore having freshly released some numbers for the Internet penetration in Singapore- and they suggest that Singapore becomes the most wired nation in the world- with 99.9% penetration! They also go on to quote Comscore that Singapore has the highest social netwrking penetration with 74% + online users having visited a SNW in Dec.

Singapore now ranks ahead of some of the world’s most connected countries including South Korea (92 per cent), Hong Kong (83.8 per cent) and Taiwan (76.8 per cent).

The government had earlier laid out plans to achieve high internet penetration numbers and make the island completely wired by 2015 with hhigh speed wireless access.

Frankly, the figures seem quite high to me- despite the fact that I see my fav chinese veg food auntie in a Marine Parade food court streaming videos using her laptop ; many kids selling stuff at their blogshops and many 14 year olds high traffic bloggers, pre teens developing iphone apps etc etc.

Do they mean to say all the heartlanders and senior citizens use the internet? Quite unlikely. Secondly, the methodology seems to suggest including people with portable modems (wireless broadband modems)- not sure if these guys could be double counted?

The answer lies here from a pointer on IDA’s website:

With effect from Apr 2007, “Total Broadband Subscriptions” (i.e. for connection speeds equal to, or greater than, 256 kbit/s, in one or both directions) includes retail xDSL, cable modems, leased line Internet, 3G, 3.5G/HSDPA, WiMAX or its equivalent and Wi-Fi hotspots access (including Wireless@SG subscriptions).

So it includes not only fixed broadband, but also phone (3G+) and Hotspots along with mobile wireless broadband. For those checking the IDA aite, the information is not here (Facts and figures on Infocomm usage) but here (Statistics on Telecom services)

Funny. This news should be front page of the website.

Either ways, being from an industry that relies completely on the internet for its bread and butter, nothing pleases one more than this news. Really, if anyone could do it- and do it well, it was Singapore.

Wonder if that makes a dent into the 3%-4% advertising spends that digital commands now.