SINGAPORE: A 17-year-old, charged with illegally hopping onto another's wireless internet connection, will have to wait a little longer to know his fate.

This is the first such case to go to the courts in Singapore.

A district court judge has called for a pre-sentence report on Garyl Tan Jia Luo, who has pleaded guilty to using his laptop to gain unauthorised access to a home wireless network.

Details that came out of court say that early on 13th May, Tan was "bored" and wanted to access the internet but his mother had locked up the cable modem.

He left home with his laptop, and went in search of an unprotected internet connection in his neighbourhood which he found outside 6 and 7, Casuarina Walk.

A man who spotted him surfing illegally on the kerb side questioned him, and called the police.

In mitigation, Tan was remorseful and said he did not know it was an offence.

He was a first-year student at Republic Polytechnic and had dropped out of the course, said his lawyer.

The pre-sentence report will be heard on the 16th January.