The Story In Summary:

1. Earl, not happy with TMNet, wrote a letter to The Malay Mail
2. The Malay Mail published the letter.
3. He got a couple of phone calls.
4. Next thing he knows, the CEO of TMNet is in his house, sitting on his bed
5. Earl shows the CEO his connection speed of 10-12kB/s
6. CEO plugs in his own laptop and gets 160-170kB/s
7. When Earl asked…how can the speed be so different?
8. They said its maybe because of “spyware”, or his “processor”.
9. Earl is still not happy.
10. Earl tests his connection again later in the day.
11. His speed is now 130-155 kB/s. Wow.
12. My speed still sucks.
13. So, when can I expect a visit?

Consumers, getting faster broadband speeds with Streamyx is now easy. Just sign up with your nearest friendly Streamyx reseller. Then, after you’ve set up your connection, all you have to do is write a letter, get it published, get the CEO of TMNet to show up in your house, and your connection will be super fast!

PS: Earl is not making the whole story up. I have a few of the same namecards and have spoken to a few of the same people, and spoken to him on the phone regarding this issue.

Earl’s latest result:

My latest result:

Do I get a visit too? Please?

Consumers: Here’s an important thing to note. (Update: yes guys, my mistake, its capitalization not the / that marks the difference. I’m happily surprised two of you noticed it, and just to be clear, as you said: “Kb/s or Kbps is the same thing.. the different is kBps or kB/s where the former is bits and the latter is Bytes. Notice the capital B for bytes.”) Use this to convert if you’re not sure.

Also, if you want to do a speed test on Speedtest.net, use an international server, not a local one. Local servers are much faster, and don’t give you a “true” idea of what the speed of your connection is to the outside world.

Here’s also some “insider” information I know, draw your own conclusions.

- VPS services, can bypass traffic shaping or throttling or speed limiting utilities.
- There is a certain allocation of bandwidth in Malaysia for “VIP” users that remains strictly allocated for those usrs, whether or not the “VIP” users are using it or not.

TMNet’s getting smarter
Back to the topic. So, what do you think is happening here? One thing’s pretty surprising though - TMNet is actually getting pretty smart at this (my personal congratulations to you, “A.B”, no malice intended), and it was a well planned “ambush”. From what Earl told me, TMNet brought some journalists and photographers as well with them when the CEO came to Earl’s house. And there was no prior warning that the CEO and everyone was going to be there. Earl was told that only a technician would be coming - not the whole entourage.

Which sucks, because the plan was to have myself and other people to test the connection as well, on our own hardware and make note of any special settings that they might have configured during the event…the secret “unlock” mechanism? As I’ve heard a rumour that some people have bribed TMNet technicians to improve their individual connections, which means that there is some “hidden” bandwidth available.

I would dismiss the whole thing as PR spin and VPS tomfoolery, but the fact is seriously, his connection is fast now. Congratulations, TMNet. And congratulations, Earl!

But where does that leave everybody else? Normal consumers?
This leaves me with the following possible conclusions:

- Although each subscriber is promised unlimited bandwidth, not everyone gets it.
- It could be because it’ll cost more to actually deliver the service as promised to consumers.
- Prominent complainers could get better connections, as then TMNet has no choice.
- So, do you know what to do next? Start writing…

In conclusion, here’s a quote made by TMNet, taken slightly out of context as the speaker was referring to P2P. However, could the same thing apply to even normal usage? Think of it, and remember that the Internet And Multimedia business of TM’s revenue contribution was RM869.9 million for Q4 2006.

“we cannot upgrade our infrastructure (merely) for the benefit of the minority.”

And my closing comment? Sure you can, just take a bit off the marketing budget. And how much is too much? Given the current situation, I think TMNet can afford to spend a lot more. When in doubt, remember that South Korea only became the most advanced broadband nation simply because the goverment was willing to go into debt and temporarily, for a while have more broadband supply than there was demand - the price for progress is expensive, but you’re a GLC, you can afford it! Please

Footnote (and this is also to A.B as well): No disrespect intended to TMNet, I think it was a good thing that the effort was taken to address the situation (although I disagree with the means slightly), but wouldn’t it be great to also address complaints online, not just those that appear in the mainstream media? There has not been one official reply to any comments here, even though it has been nearly a year since this site has been online…