I’m on the road again, a little. Singapore has nearly ubiquitous internet access if you are local; it’s wrapped into your broadband payment as just another service or utility that everyone seems to have. The city is small and urbanized enough that this is practical.
As modern and easy as Singapore is, especially when it comes to all things tech, I was surprised at the new Ion Utterly-Over-The-Top-Temple-of-Retail that I couldn’t get on anywhere, even Starbucks. As convenient as the system is, you are back in 1998 if you aren’t ‘in’ the system. I’m a fourth-class person in this bubble!
Well not to worry. It turn out that the Orchard Rd. SingTel office will sell you 3-day chunks of unlimited access for $18 Singapore dollars, which is about US$13 at the moment.
UPDATE/CLARIFICATION: Not exactly! Once you have a SingTel-Huawei E1752 7.2 Mbps USB modem, which SingTel will happily sell you for $128 Singapore dollars, you can get a 3-day pre-paid card for $18. Ah well.
Better yet, your correspondent can save you quite a bit of sweating in 95F/35C temperatures plus humidity with this tip: the Starbucks at Scotts and Orchard Rd., on the street below Wheelock Place is a place where you can find entirely inexplicable, free, apparently unlimited internet connectivity in Singapore. Don’t ask any questions, I know I didn’t.
BONUS UPDATE/CLARIFICATION #2!!: Many Singapore hotspots are covered by iCell, and if you find yourself at one, simply register. Foreigners welcome. It’s free and about all you need is your passport number. So that’s my final answer–the iCell network in Singapore is the simple way for nomads to get connected in Singapore.
I also found that even Singapore cheap hotels will often have unlimited access throughout, and I do mean the most cut-rate hostels that you’ll find here. I know that free Wi-Fi is becoming the norm in most of the developed world as well, even for cheap places you might stay, but it is most certainly not yet the norm if you’re doing the budget tour around Asia.
Singapore is a great place to visit for a few days btw. It’s always been fashionable with budget travelers to diss it as not the ‘real Asia’ but it seems to be what most cities in Asia are becoming, at varying rates. Plus the food is outstanding, clean and very cheap. Definitely check it out for a few days before you go chase down that ‘real Asia’, because you’ll still find that soon enough!
