According to this article: “Wimax.com - Malaysia to award 2.3GHz licenses next month”, the delay of awarding the licenses since September 2006 is expected drawing to a close soon. Interesting things noted are that the operator “offering the highest speed at the lowest price” and with a “substantial amount of resources required for a nation wide rollout” will be the one most likely to win, according Malaysian Energy, Water & Communications Minister, Dato Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik. Bidders include Redtone, DiGi and Maxis. Although not noted in the article, Green Packet might be one of the bidders. Another article titled “Foreign firms to build WiMax system in Malaysia” , says that foreign firms Alcatel, Lucent, Redline Communications and local firm Nasioncom are also bidding.

Update: Maxis & Motorola have been testing 4 live trial WiMax sites. They have announced a successful call from the KLCC trial site, and testing for the other trial sites is planned to be completed in the second quarter of 2007.
My personal plea (that I’m sure a lot of you agree with too): Please, Dato Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik, let the winner be the ISP that we have all been waiting for.

I am aware that some of you have social lives and girlfriends, besides the time you spend surfing, gaming and using up all of TMNet’s bandwidth

Hence, I would like to present this: Valentine’s Day Special - YvonneFoong.com. Trouble thinking of what to get your girlfriend for Valentine’s day? Get a lovely necklace which consists of “Blue Venetian glass beads in heart shape, Aurora Borealis coated Swarovski Crystals, and silver tone ball chain” - and you also get a free book. All below RM31.

Why? First, the necklace is nice. Second, you get a book free. Third, you help Yvonne Foong, which suffers from the incredibly rare Neurofibromatosis Type 2 tumours. (Only 1 other person in Malaysian has it.) Fourth, when your girlfriend finds out where you bought it from, she will think you are such a sweet person, and this earns you some points on her good side.

Go to Yvonne’s site and place your order!

I remember there was a reader who asked that, if TMNet ever implemented the Volume Based System, how would we know we were being billed correctly? I got my answer in this post from FriedBeef.com, which previously featured an interview with RedesignMalaysia.com previously. Here’s an excerpt:

You can read more on Bitemeter II here, which is freeware by the way. This will probably be useful for those who are on Streamyx Basic 384K or Streamyx Basic 512K packages, which charge you per minute after you’ve used up either 10/60 hours. And also those on the 1MBps/2MBps packages who want to know whether they are getting what they are paying for.

Guess we might have to wait a while more for things to return to normal - the end of February, to be exact according to this article, on delays to the quake cable repairs. Which, of course is a “good excuse” for a certain internet provider to continue throttling our bandwidth.

Here’s a quote though from Hong Kong’s Office of the Telecommunications Authority, OFTA Director General Au Man-ho - “he said internet providers had diverted web traffic and that the delay was not having a significant impact on internet services in Hong Kong. According to our reports from the providers, all services have largely been resumed back to normal - it’s approaching 100 per cent.”

What percent do you think Malaysia’s internet services are running at now?

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.