About Us - SingAREN

Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network (SingAREN) started as a national project funded by the government in 1997 to take on the challenge of ensuring that Singapore research and education community is connected to the international community. SingAREN was initially funded as a project by the then Telecom Authority of Singapore (TAS) and National Science and Technology Board (NSTB), which has since evolved to the current Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) and Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) respectively.

The international connection was launched on 7 Nov 1997 by the Assistant to the USA President for Science, John Gibbons and Singapore's Minister for Education and the Chairman of National IT Committee, RAdm Teo Chee Hean. Singapore is the first country outside of North America to connect to STARTAP (Science, Technology and Research Transit Access Point) of the National Science Foundation, USA for access into the vBNS (very high performance backbone network service), preceding TANET, Transpac and APAN by a year. In a triple-first situation, Singapore is the first trans-oceanic partner to sign up with the US. We are also the first outside North America and the first in Asia.

Being the national research and education network (REN), SingAREN has maintained closed working relationship with global Next Generation Internet community such as Internet2 and APAN (Asia Pacific Advanced Network). SingAREN has high bandwidth and direct network connectivity to a number of RENs, including TEIN2, Abilene, ASCC and NICT.

On 1 October 2003, SingAREN was officially registered as a Society to widen its roles to better serve the user community.

SingAREN as a society has received strong support from the Institutes of Higher Learning and researchers for its network connectivity and activities. Special interest groups (SIGs) was formed by the members to focus on specific areas such as IP convergence, e-learning and life sciences. These SIGs are intended to develop and deploy services that are beneficial to the community. It also sees the society's need to engage industry partnership in its projects, thus establishing closer ties with the industry.

There will be more challenges ahead for SingAREN as a society, but with the support from the community and dedication of the management committee, SingAREN will continue to take the role in leading Singapore's transition to the next generation internet.