Singtel has announced a new fibre broadband service that will push speeds of up to 10Gbps to residential homes in Singapore.

The service offering follows a pilot trial last year involving selected customers and is delivered off the telco's Next Generation Gigabit Passive Optical Network (10GPON).

Singtel's Singapore managing director of home consumer, Goh Seow Eng, said: "We recognise that residential customers are using greater bandwidth and requiring faster speeds for their online activities." At 10Gbps, the offering currently tops the cohort of connection speeds available to households in Singapore, Goh said.

Following Singtel's launch, local competitor StarHub sent across a response that pointed to its focus on "meeting customers' real needs".

Its head of entertainment and SmartLife Lim Shu Fen noted, for instance, that the majority of its home broadband customers preferred to connect to the internet via Wi-Fi. So StarHub offered its integrated fibre and cable dual-broadband service plans aimed at improving wireless coverage and service reliability.

"Nevertheless, we will continue to monitor industry developments and customer preferences to ensure our broadband plans remain competitive and relevant," Lim said.

Another local player M1 had unveiled a 10Gbps service for enterprises in May 2014 as well as its own GPON service for businesses in August last year, offering connection speeds of 2Gbps to 10Gbps. It told local news agency CNA that its 10Gbps GPON service for Singapore households was ready "will be launched soon".

According to Singtel, a 10Gbps connection would enable a two-hour HD movie to be downloaded within 90 seconds, or a two-hour 4K-quality movie to be downloaded in six minutes.

Priced at S$189 (US$132.6) a month on a two-year contract, the telco said its new 10Gbps Fibre Home Bundle service includes a 10G optical network router, wireless dual-band AC router, service installation, and 4G mobile broadband (data cap at 500MB). Also included for a limited time are a pair of Wi-Fi Mesh devices, offered through Singtel's partnership with AirTies and touted to eliminate dead or poor Wi-Fi spots within the customer's home.

With the new 10Gbps service, subscribers will be able to distribute the wired connection between an additional four 1Gbps ports.

The service will be available later this month, though, customers can register their interest in signing up via Singtel's website before February 15.