Cybercafe boom
Many new outlets have opened recently catering to workers and students
By Tan Weizhen 
Migrant workers use the Internet at outlets like RS Cafe (above) in Desker Road to stay in touch with their families via instant messaging and webcams. Cybercafes have sprouted up in areas housing foreign workers and students. -- ST PHOTO: CAROLINE CHIA
A FEW Indian and Chinese workers sit hunched before a row of computer terminals in a dingy, poorly lit cybercafe in Geylang, typing on instant chat services such as Yahoo Messenger, or peering into webcams to talk with their family members back home.
This scene is repeated in Internet cafes that have popped up in the past couple of years, mainly around Geylang, Balestier and Little India, which thousands of migrant workers in the construction, service and health-care industries, and foreign students, call home.
These foreigners are giving the fading cybercafe, overshadowed by increasing home broadband penetration and speeds, a new lease of life.
There are 110 cybercafes listed in the phone book. In Geylang, more than 20 of these cafes crowd the narrow streets between Lorong 10 and 23, or dot the outskirts.
Many have opened in the past couple of years, according to operators. Some are chains owned by the same operator. At Balestier, where there was only one cybercafe a couple of years ago, residents now have four to choose from.
At Little India near Mustafa Centre, more than 10 cybercafes are strung out amid the grocery stores, restaurants and electronics shops. All have signs screaming rates as low as $1 an hour. Most are 24-hour joints.
Operators say between 50 and 90 per cent of their customers are from China, the Philippines, India and Vietnam. It is a sign of the times that many cybercafes now also provide extra services such as helping customers to apply for new visas or visa extensions at the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority of Singapore website, at fees ranging between $2 and $20.
One shop in Geylang Lorong 14, V2 Entertainment, even offers to help book air tickets online for workers who want to fly back home, for $20.
The sheer numbers of the transient population make them a lucrative market, said shop owners.
'When Singapore started bringing in more foreign workers, particularly from China, we spotted the opportunity and opened our first Internet cafe in Geylang, an area favoured by the mainland Chinese foreign workers,' said a spokesman for Tenchi, a chain of cybercafes in Geylang, Balestier, Jalan Besar and Jurong.
Source:
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking...ry_426483.html 
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