In not too surprising news, people are still dissapointed with Streamyx.

“In Malaysia, if you wanted broadband access, you don’t get much choices except sticking with TMNet’s Streamyx, especially so when you are living outside the capital Kuala Lumpur. I earn my living through the Internet, it feeds me and my family and you would understand how important a stable connection means to me.”

Khai Lee of webwatch.com.my finds it hilarious that Malaysia needs a research team from MMU to tell us that broadband here is not up to par. Its not “quite bad” as described in the article, I think its really absofuckinglutely bad.

“A research team from Multimedia University (MMU) is studying broadband services in Malaysia, Singapore and Japan, and their initials results indicate that local services are not up to par.

The team has completed about 75% of its research, and the general consensus is that broadband services in Malaysia are “quite bad” compared to those in the other two countries. ”

One more point to note about the article: “Joan Ang, a Mescorp research assistant director, said that there was a lack of qualified workers to implement and manage broadband services here.There are not enough skilled workers at the service centres. Also, another pressing issue is that the rural areas cannot get access to broadband”.

Is it really that hard to find qualified people? I have a suggestion to a certain ISP - spend some of your advertising & marketing budget on human resources, seriously.

One person seems to be dissapointed with DiGi, complaining that they “tipu” him. However, its not very clear what’s going on here…it seems to be that he was signed up for a package higher than he wanted to - or did he misunderstand when he signed up?

” Kalau aku ada masa untuk baca benda2 gitu, takkan aku nk tanya agent dan DSS korang tu? Hey, I am a customer. Memang tugas korang la untuk bagitau customer what plan do u have. Ini tidak. Korang tipu aku??????

Hangin, hangin sungguh2 kepala aku. Sampai sekarang aku hangin lagik nih. Apa kejadahnya macam tu?

Adakah Digi memang sejak asal PENIPU BESAR macam tu?”

We tak tahu if DiGi is a “pentipu”, but they seem to be mostly innovative and competitive (re: thetruthaboutprepaid) in rolling out new services, and we hope that their broadband service is as competitive and customer friendly as their prepaid. Best suggestion would be someone from DiGi to respond to that officially and fix it.

Good news for the future:

- TM’s international link managed to reach 70Gbps. (Yes, this is a good thing)

- Green Packet looks to be all set to roll out wireless broadband.

- An insider in the fibre optics industry mentioned to me that Time Telekom will be rolling out 10-20MBps packages for cheap in about a year.

In the meantime, you can find out your real broadband speed (here too), and pray for better broadband.

Hi guys - sorry, there hasn’t been much updates these few days. We’ve been very busy on another project (which is relevant to this site, more details in a bit). Yes, we’re still arranging interviews with the WiMax winners (good question suggestions!) - most are keen to be interviewed, but its hard to find available dates. We will keep you posted.

As some of you might have noticed, there’s a new thing in the local blogosphera and it’s called Advertlets.com. Besides being made by the same team behind RedesignMalaysia.com, here’s why its interesting: It’ll help you make money with your blog…its good for advertisers to reach a market that watches increasingly less tv, listens to less radio, and doesn’t read much of the papers. And yes - it’s not just by the same team behind RedesignMalaysia, these projects are affiliated.

Thanks to one of our volunteers (a charming and intelligent MIT graduate!), and the work of our team, we have managed to compile, match and process a list of IP address ranges from virtually all Malaysian ISPs, including: TM Net, DiGi Internet Exchange, NasionCom, MaxisNet, Airzed, Time Telekom, NTT MSC / Arc Net, Jaring / MIMOS (MIX), CNX Solutions, EB Technologies, Bizsurf, and more. With these IP range addresses, we can detect which ISP site visitors are using. You can read more on how its used with Advertlets here.

Why is this great for RedesignMalaysia.com?
1. We know what ISP you are using - and can measure popularity of ISPs.
2. In future, when this IP address database becomes larger, and we can geolocate more effectively (eg whether IPs are from Kelana Jaya or Ampang)…we can recommend you the best ISP available for your area - automatically, just by detecting your IP and matching it with other visitors in the area. This can be a combination of consumer ratings (manually submitted by the users), and also automatic speed tests of visitors accessing this site (logging in their page load time, area they are in and ISP used)

Why is this great for Advertlets.com?
1. To deliver targeted advertising to Malaysians only (so advertisers don’t waste their budget, and make their message count to the right people.).
2. To deliver relevant advertising to bloggers based on where they are - making it better for the bloggers and their visitors, and better click through rates for the advertisers due to more relevance.

So, what can RedesignMalaysia and Advertlets do together? (Please add your suggestions via the comments box)
These are a few of the ideas we have:

1. Allow all ISPs in Malaysia besides TMNet Streamyx, to target unhappy TMNet Streamyx Users based on IP - and advertise to them, encouraging them to switch ISPs! , spurring competition and allowing them to compete with Streamyx’s massive advertising budget. Eg, you browse a blog…then you notice a relevant advertisement (based on where you are): “Dear consumer, your connection speed could be 2.5x faster. would you like to try a better broadband service available in your area, Petaling Jaya?”.
2. In real time, monitor the performance of ALL ISPs in Malaysia, and which perform the best in your area (all visitors have to do is access this website and RedesignMalaysia can calculate it automatically)
3. ISPs can use the Advertlets Poll to find out more about what their consumers and potential customers want. Eg, is there demand for 2MBps broadband? How much would you pay for it? For a sample of the poll system, take a look at the “WHO ARE YOU” poll on the right hand side, or go to the Advertlets homepage (it’s on the right sidebar).
4. High traffic bloggers can help advertise the ISP that they are using on their blogs, and get a discount on their monthly broadband access charges.
5. Bloggers can choose to display RedesignMalaysia.com advertising (for free, we don’t have much funding at RedesignMalaysia…), if they have remaining ad space that is unsold. Kind of like how Google shows Public Service Announcements if there are no paying keywords matched to your blog. So, when you’re not earning money, you’re helping raise awareness on how bad broadband is here. Sign up on Advertlets.com and drop me a line if you’re up for that kind of advertising and activism!

Let us know, thanks!

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.

A consortium of Malaysian ISPs including founding members TM, Jaring & AIMS with peering members Maxis, Time, Digi, Nasioncom, Heitech Padu, MyKris, Airzed, Extreme Broadband, VDSL, EBTech, Freenet, Bizsurf, Paneagle and CNX have come together to launch MyIX - The Malaysia Internet Exchange.

What is MyIX anyway? A summary…

(more…)

I think by now a lot of you might know about thetruthaboutprepaid.com, and, more recently, thetruthaboutprepaid.com.my. Yes, they are different, and neither might be the “truth”, or they both might be, or one might be. Who knows? As someone who is not a prepaid user of either service, I won’t comment.

But, it’s interesting, and compelling how they competing, and attacking each other in a country where comparative advertising and slamming your competitor is usually not practiced. Don’t get me wrong, its a good thing. This level of competition is exactly what we need. The kind that Carrefour, Giant and Tesco have as well. Its like, the exact opposite of a cartel. And its good for us consumers, really.

What do you think it’ll take to get the ISPs to compete to push their services and lower their rates, the same way that the prepaid war, and hypermarket price war is going on now? What do you think we can do to get it to that stage? Would the bloodshed through cut-throat competition leave only the best service providers standing, and hopefully the best service? Please enter your comments, I’ll love to hear your suggestions.

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Josh Lim

DiGi’s chief technology officer, Jon Eddy says: “Our network expansion and upgrade contains two important elements - significantly enhance our EDGE network quality and performance and, extend EDGE coverage to more than 60 per cent of the country’s population.”

Read the full article at The Star Online Tech Central

All three mobile phone operators continued to enjoy strong subscriber growth in the first three months of the year, collectively adding just under a million users to reach 20.51 million as at end-March.

Read the full article at The Edge Daily.

Lundal said DiGi’s EDGE services were well suited for the current market demand and said true mobile broadband would only take off in Malaysia in the next three to four years.

Read the full article at The Edge Daily.