I got notified this from a reader, and managed to confirm that eB Technologies is no longer taking new residential signups, and will only be doing corporate broadband for the time being. From the looks of it, a representative said it was “temporary”, but has not given a timeline.

They will continue to serve existing customers though. I wonder why they decided to do this - is it that hard to make a profit from residential broadband? That being said, I sympathize with them - having to compete with Streamyx’s marketing budget (billboards, tv commercials, direct mail, and all) is not easy.

I was just searching around on theedgedaily.com, and I came across an interesting piece of news - TheEdgeDaily : Gov’t may allow foreign broadband providers.

Apparently, according to the article: the government may allow new local and foreign players to provide broadband service if the existing ones do not make the service more affordable and improve the infrastructure.

The article also states a quote from Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik: - “The directive from the Prime Minster is that national development plans override all business considerations.”

Seems like great news, doesn’t it? It’s about time! Competition will shake things up here! But guess which year the article is from? This year, 2007? Late 2006, maybe? Nope.

The article was from the year 2004.

Yet we don’t have a single formidable foreign player now, do we? Sigh.

Paul Ooi writes about tips and tricks on calling TMNet Streamyx’s call center. It’s riddled with sarcasm and profanity, but if you read closely enough, it might be of use to you if you have problems connecting. Eg, if you say that you are a “network engineer” they will not ask you stupid basic questions.

And, the people at the Lowyat Forums have the following posts: Default router username/passwords (just in case anyone forgets!) and things to do to self investigate for Streamyx-related problems and subsequent troubleshooting. In case of “emergency”, there are also some proxies you can use, which might result in a faster connection. If you keep getting disconnected, try check out your SNR (signal to noise ratio) Margin.

And, you can try some of the steps here to unblock Bittorrent traffic.

Just wondering, for you people - which is/was faster (please answer based on your personal experience): Waiting for TMNet to help you, or Googling around for the answer?

You can read the story on the NST, and another from the Borneo Post. From the article, it seems that residents in the town of Miri will get free Wi-Fi access for 2 years, after which, a minimum flat rate will be imposed.

It mentions that the Sarawak government will be chipping in between one and two million ringgit. Is it really that cheap and easy to get broadband to 250,000 subcribers?

Terrible sentence construction and grammar aside, Chief Minister Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud has a good point, if you can see it (this is a verbatim quote): “How could� [we] have a K-society without internet penetration be wired up to the world? In Sarawak, however, we have found a way at minimum cost”.

Translation, courtesy of RedesignMalaysia.com: You cannot have a knowledge based society without sufficient internet penetration and being connected to the rest of the world. We at Sarawak have found a way to do this cheaply.

Why can’t we do this in the Klang Valley? In theory, it should be harder to implement Wi-Fi in East Malaysian areas such as Sarawak because there are more mountains over there and uneven land. As Wi-Fi signals, while not needing line of sight transmission, are hampered by walls and obstacles. FYI, all telecommunications and network facilities in Sarawak are handled by SACOFA, as they have been appointed by the Sarawak State Government for a period of 20 years starting year 2002.

So, if this Wi-Fi rollout and free access for 2 years thing can be done in a less populated and less developed place like Sarawak, why can’t we implement this in the Klang Valley, or at least KL?
If this “free broadband” thing takes off in Sarawak, its proof that a monopoly might not be a bad thing. Of course, that’s only if they do serve the people. There’s a healthy dose of skepticism over at the Lowyat forums on this topic. Honestly its not really clear whether the residents already have broadband or is this all planned. Personally, I know that this is a good thing somewhat - at least they are addressing the topic, and someone is thinking. However, what happens after the press dies down, and the work has to start?

As we know in Malaysia, “the problem isn’t leadership, it’s implementation”…

I’m wondering, how many regular visitors here at RedesignMalaysia.com are also regular visitors to Lowyat.net? Please add a comment. Reason I’m asking is because:

1. It’ll be good to know how many people visit both sites, just as an idea of how many people are interested in broadband and tech in Malaysia.
2. New visitors to RedesignMalaysia.com would mainly click through the links and buttons posted on the Lowyat.net forums, but regular visitors to RedesignMalaysia.com (who might visit Lowyat.net) visit mainly by typing in the URL directly or through bookmarks.
3. Seeing that the vast majority of people in Lowyat are techies pissed off at how bad broadband is here, what is the possibility of doing a joint project together? Eg, traffic exchange, joint forums, member gatherings, etc?
4. Is there any official person to contact regarding the above, on collaboration/traffic exchange with Lowyat.net?

   Lowyat.net rocks! Thanks for supporting us guys, your buttons and comments in the forum account for nearly 5% of all our traffic. Let’s hope we can get our connections unthrottled soon…

A great, surprisingly unrestrained editorial in The Star. A. Asohan comments in The Star (In Tech), about the recent throttling exercise carried out by Malaysian ISPs. He starts the article with a metaphor as of such: Errant motorists are causing havoc on the roads - so, automobile manufacturers announce that they will limit the maximum speeds of their cars.

It also mentioned there are rumours that TMNet Streamyx might follow Maxis Broadband’s Terms of Service, which include automatic disconnection after a period of inactivity, and a total usage per month limit. (Maxis is 3GB - which is ridiculously low, considering spending a couple of hours on YouTube can easily rack up hundreds of megabytes). This aren’t unfounded rumours - why do you think your disconnections are getting more frequent? And your traffic is being throttled? Why do you think your total monthly usage is showing up in your monthly bill?

Guys. Keep making noise, and let them know that this kind of action will not be tolerated. I have it on good word that TMNet and some of their suppliers monitor this blog. We now get close to 1000 unique visits a day, btw. Nearly half is from Google, consisting of search terms such as “maxis broadband” and “tmnet streamyx”, and the other half is from people like yourselves - the bloggers, the forumites, the gamers and more.

Consider letting (links to contact pages): The Star, The New Straits Times, The Malay Mail, The Edge, Utusan and other media publications know that you’ll like to read more about RedesignMalaysia.com in the papers - we need to take this fight offline, not just on the net.

We need to do this before TMNet starts changings its monthly terms. Not after, which will be too late.

From the papers:

Apparently, 62% of Malaysian adults access the internet directly, either at home or at work, as of June 2006. 7% are regular users who use the Net at least once a week, 55% percent have occasional Net access and 41% percent do not directly use it. That makes it an average of six in ten Malaysian adults logging on to the internet.

I wonder how many toddlers/kids/teens access the internet?

And from the blogs:

The Silent Room has some tips on how to improve your torrential potential, and so does Havuk, whose solution is to remain anonymous.

“Engrish writer” at hot.com.my reports that there were 3 major outages in half a day on February 5th 2007 in Cyberjaya, Malaysia’s supposed technology hub. But for some reason, there was one day where he could get “3.4 million terabytes per second”.

Fendy, whose blog tagline is “I learned it the hard way, now I’m going to share it with ya…”, shows us the fastest way to make Streamyx available at home. It involves applying for Streamyx, waiting for 3 days, finding out that your house is out of the 5km radius, and then, threatening to cancel. Quote: “When I told them to cancel my application, I figured that they weren’t willing to lose a customer and at the same time lose the commission fee out of it.”

Ashotiwoth troubleshoots like a pro, and still hasn’t got above 70% of the required speed.

Jase Lee is “real pissed off the way these TM people are handling their customers“, and decided to e-mail all the bigshots with a detailed complaint. A response is pending.

Lastly, Teh Shu Jia seems to have written something in chinese on Streamyx’s “best effort”. An autotranslated to English version is here.

TM has hit back at allegations that they are competing unfairly against ASPs, claiming that “they have never contravened any MCMC regulations” and that they are “just defending our own business”. This is in response to a pro-tem association of ASPs that claim that TM is implementing a strategy that is unfair and anticompetitive with its members.

Mohamad Taib then directly contradicts himself by saying that ASPs compete against TM’s fixed line call business, and that TM has suffered losses in fixed-line revenues because of this competition - and then goes on to say that “businesses have to innovate and find new paths to move up the value chain.”

Hello TM! Fixed line services, like the ones provided by yourself are nothing innovative, which is why the ASPs can offer something that threatens your dominance - discounted calls and better value for consumers. TM, your business should innovate. For example, voice mail for fixed lines like what you’ve just rolled out is cool - but people have been doing it for years now.

If you haven’t been following, here’s the story in a nutshell. ASPs are companies that offer services like discounted calls and VOIP. They have to get their lines, and services from TM. However, not all ASPs get the same deal. TM’s preferred partners get the best deal, whereelse the rest get higher rates and are forced to subscribe to expensive services they do not need that are packaged together. In a way, TM is controlling the market by proxy, and doing everything they can to squeeze the competition. You have to give TM credit though - they are doing everything they can to come up with innovative new ways to screw their partners, in dubiously legal ways.

TM, when you are both a service provider and a player in the same market, there can be no fair competition, especially since there is such an obvious bias.

In case some of you are wondering - what does this have to do with this website’s focus, which is improving broadband in Malaysia? Well, think about it this way - if ASPs are given fertile ground and a level playing field to compete, they can extend their services from just VOIP and discount calls - they can offer broadband services and compete against TM Net. And that’ll be good news for everyone, except TM.

TM, I have to agree with you on one thing. You have right to compete. But not the right to monopolize.