Review: Whizcomms Fibre Internet Setup

Whizcomms is the newest Internet Provider in Singapore, with their claims of the cheapest 1 Gbps plan. M1 just came up with a promotion at the same price plan but Whizcomms responded with a counter offer. Good times ahead. I managed to qualify for the Whizcomms free 3 months Fibre Internet trial, and they came over to setup the 1 Gbps promotion. Installation was a breeze. The appointment was set for 9am to 1pm and the 2 service engineers came down at about 920am. They took only 15 min to setup and test the internet connection.

The free 3 months trial come with a Optical Network Router (ONR), free delivery and installation – during normal working hours.

There is an option to add on a router at S$98, but I didn’t take it up. Can’t remember what brand it was, but not the major brands like ASUS, D-Link, Linksys.

Setup

The setup was done in less than 15 min, including the verification and contract signing details. The setup team were well prepared and professional. Whizcomms provided ONR is the Huawei HG8244H, which I can’t seem to find any information, but its specifications are in between the HG8242 and HG8245. There is 4 LAN Gigabit Ethernet, and 1 USB port (should be USB 2.0).

What is interesting, is that unlike other Fibre Internet setup which typically uses a Optical Network Terminal (ONT), the provided ONR has all 4 LAN ports active, and it is capable of serving as a router – which means, port forwarding / routing etc can be setup at the ONR level.

This works wonderful for my HDB setup so that I can leave the ONR in the service cabinet, connect via LAN to all my bedrooms, and deploy my router in the living room where there’s a LAN port available as well. I think most other broadband providers only activate 1 LAN port on the ONT, which requires you to put the router in the service cabinet too, if you want to make use of the LAN distribution points.

Since the Whizcomms ONR here serve as a router, setup would need to be a little more advanced though. For SSH access, I currently have to setup two port forwards, 1 on my WiFi router and 1 on my ONR, since it is operating like 2 separate networks. Perhaps I should put them on the same network.

Whizcomms speeds so far seems great, and Speedtest results are positive but will test it out more in detail soon. While the 3 months free trial is over, they currently offer a 24 plans @ $32, and will throw in an additional 3 months free, which makes for an effective price of $28.45. Will M1 continue to match them? SITEX is this week and they might have some promotion up their sleeve. M1 does have more freebies, like a mobile SIM, free DECT phone, etc, which could be useful.