By the end of the year, it will be possible to roam almost anywhere in
Singapore and get a wireless signal.

As part of its Intelligent Nation 2015 (iN2015) program, the island nation will be
able to boast of countrywide Wi-Fi coverage in a few months, Bill Chang,
executive vice president of wireless service provider SingTel, said in a recent
interview.

"At the end of the year, Singapore will be one mega hot spot," he said. "They
are breaking Singapore into three regions and looking at ways to maximize
coverage."

The country had a pretty good head start. The official report released with
the unfurling of the Intelligent Nation program pointed out that Singapore
already had one public hot spot for every square kilometer at the end of last
year. Communication between hot spots will be augmented by mesh networking,
according to the Intelligent Nation report. Commercial WiMax--a wireless
standard that allows signals to travel over longer distances than those using
Wi-Fi--will begin in Singapore by the end of the year, said Chang.

iN2015 was officially launched in June 2006 though the government had over the past year unraveled some details in the multifacted roadmap, which includes a US$1.3 billion e-government plan and a US$70 million program to beef up manpower resources in the infocomm industry.

The country doesn't have the large domestic market, manufacturing base or low costs of
places like India and China, so the idea is to focus more on industries with a large intellectual
property component, similar to what South Korea and Israel are doing. The program is backed by various government subsidies and incentives.

Other initiatives in the program include digitizing public health records,
bringing broadband connections into at least 90 percent of residences,
recruiting multinationals to locate their call centers for Asia in the country
and in general boosting Singaporean technology exports. The country hopes to add
80,000 information technology jobs through the effort. Another goal is to put
computers into 100 percent of homes with school-age children.

This is all good news for SingTel, he added. The 127-year-old company (it
started as a telegraph provider back in the days of British colonial rule) has
emerged as one of the telecom giants of Asia. In its 2001 fiscal year, SingTel
reported revenue of US$3.1 billion. Approximately 81 percent of the revenue
derived domestically. In fiscal 2005, revenue came to US$8.3 billion and 71
percent came from overseas.

"We are Asia's largest multimarket mobile operator," Chang said. "We want to
be the king of the hill in Asia rather than spread ourselves too thin."

To expand, the company cuts deals or invests in regional wireless carriers
such as Indonesia's Telkomsel and India's Bharti Airtel. Through these alliances
SingTel garners about 2.5 million new cellular customers a month with around
800,000 coming from neighboring Indonesia. Along with growing the cellular
business, SingTel wants to expand its managed services business.

In addition, Singapore is investing heavily in recruiting biotech
companies and U.S. and European scientists to work in the country.

ZDNet Asia staff contributed to this article.