SINGAPORE - A second Internet service provider (ISP) will soon offer users here easy access to the latest American TV series and Hollywood movies through video streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu, challenging pay-TV incumbents SingTel and StarHub.

Fibre broadband service provider MyRepublic will offer its Teleport service from next month. ISP ViewQwest launched its service last April.

Unlike StarHub's cable TV and SingTel's mioTV, which require users to pay a monthly subscription and use proprietary set-top boxes, these services are delivered over the Internet and can be accessed over various devices, from a regular PC to media streamers such as Apple TV and Roku to game consoles such as the Xbox 360.

Many offerings on these overseas streaming services are also available on the local telcos' pay TV.

Some ad-supported services such as Hulu are free. The popular Netflix costs US$7.99 (about S$10) a month but viewers get unlimited access to all content on its service. Also available are music streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify.

However, these Internet services are limited geographically - users outside the United States would normally be blocked from accessing them.

MyRepublic and ViewQwest's services rely on technologies that trick, say, Netflix into thinking that the customer is logging in from the US.

Many savvy users here have already bypassed the content restriction through virtual private network (VPN) services, available online for as little as $10 a month. But they also need to tinker with router settings, which is too complicated for most.

MyRepublic and ViewQwest do away with this hassle and special access is built into the broadband service. ViewQwest users get a modem-cum-router pre-configured with the right settings; MyRepublic's routing smarts are built into its network.

MyRepublic chief executive Malcolm Rodrigues said Teleport is "a sign of the times". Today, video streaming makes up about half of the traffic of the ISP's 10,000 broadband customers, he said.