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Support for low-income families to stay connected during 'circuit-breaker' period; more TV, streaming content for all: IMDA

SINGAPORE — The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) on Wednesday (April 8) announced measures to ensure low-income households are able to go online to complete daily tasks. It also announced that more digital content would be made available for everyone.

IMDA is working with local broadcaster Mediacorp, pay-TV operators Singtel and StarHub, and other content providers to make more free content available.

IMDA is working with local broadcaster Mediacorp, pay-TV operators Singtel and StarHub, and other content providers to make more free content available.

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SINGAPORE — The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) on Wednesday (April 8) announced measures to ensure low-income households are able to go online to complete daily tasks. It also announced that more digital content would be made available for everyone. 

These measures were announced on the second day of the “circuit-breaker” period where all residents have to stay at home till May 4 unless providing or purchasing essential goods.   

With all schools now also doing home-based learning, enhancements have been made to the NEU PC Plus programme, which helps low-income students obtain a subsidised personal computer and free fibre broadband, said IMDA.

Speaking to the media via video-conference on Wednesday, Minister for Communications and Information S Iswaran said that the Government will help “as many (students) as we can”.

“We want to make sure that, as far as possible, no child is left without the kind of digital access that he or she needs to do their home-based learning.”

The authority said that it would work to speed up the process and also streamline the application and disbursement of services and items. 

Separately, students under the Ministry of Education Financial Assistance Scheme will be fully supported through the Inspire Fund if they need a computer. 

For low-income families with three or more school-going children, more mobile broadband choices and the option of a second subsidised computer are now available.  

IMDA is also working with players in the tech industry such as CrimsonLogic, HP and SGTech to donate cash or IT products such as laptops and refurbished computers to support lower-income households. 

“IMDA will help to ensure that all who need to can stay connected from the safety of their homes, whether for telecommuting, home-based learning, accessing information and entertainment, or staying in touch with family and friends,” the authority said. 

In a separate statement on Wednesday, StarHub said that “to support students in their home-based learning”, it will be sponsoring instantaneous mobile broadband connectivity to students from lower-income families who do not have access to broadband at home.

Students identified by the Ministry of Education for this initiative will receive 4G dongles or MiFi routers from StarHub with unlimited data, and this initiative will last for six months.

A MiFi router is a wireless router that acts as mobile Wi-Fi hotspot.

The telco said it has already done so for 200 primary and secondary students, and by next week, it expects that up to 550 students will have benefitted from this initiative.

MORE CONTENT FOR EVERYONE 

Singapore residents will also get access to a range of television and streaming content as IMDA works with local broadcaster Mediacorp, pay-TV operators Singtel and StarHub, and other content providers to “make available more news, educational and entertainment content, across free-to-air and over-the-top platforms”. 

Pay-TV operators will also be expanding their range of preview channels. Singtel is increasing their offering to 30 free preview channels starting Thursday for its subscribers, while its non-subscribers can access the channels through its Cast streaming service.

StarHub will increase the number of free preview channels to 32 for its customers from Wednesday.

Mediacorp will be extending its time belts for Tamil-language channel Vasantham and Malay-language channel Suria with immediate effect, with both channels starting transmission from 9am daily.

On whether foreign worker dormitories have the telecommunications infrastructure to support these services, Mr Iswaran said that “a significant proportion has the infrastructure for WiFi and so on”, but that not all have it.

“IMDA is working with the dormitory operators and the telcos to put in the infrastructure for the rest, and I think that this can be accomplished over the next one to two weeks,” he said.

The living conditions of foreign workers have come under the spotlight recently, as the number of infected Covid-19 patients from foreign worker dormitories has been on the rise.

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Manpower said that sanitary conditions and waste management at two foreign worker dormitories gazetted as isolation areas, which had come under scrutiny, had improved in recent days.

Related topics

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