P1 (Packet One) broadband has launched its new website yesterday apparently. You can view the flash version or the HTML version here. I recommend the HTML one.

If you don’t know what WiMax is to start with, read here.
I love question and answer number 1.5 by the way. Hilarious!

Is P1 W1MAX safe to use?
• Absolutely! P1 W1MAX is totally safe to use.

Phew, that’s great to know! Now that we have health concerns out of the way…

The news in short: RM1999 (!) to start, and anywhere between RM49-RM269 for 400 kbps - 2.4 Mbps. Interestingly, the lowest pricing range is if you take the 24 month contract. However, if you sign up before 30th September 08, you apparently get a the modem for free (worth RM999)

Speed is noted on a “best efforts” basis. Coverage so far includes:
Gombak, Johor Bahru, Kampung Baru, KL City Center, Sentul, Setapak, Subang Hi-Tech, Subang Jaya, Sunway, USJ.

Note: If you’re reading this, P1, please consider the Kelana Jaya/Bandar Utama/Tropicana/Damansara Perdana area. Really! Not only because I stay there, but there are lots of people who do who can afford the higher pricing bracket that P1 Wimax is in, and are willing to pay for better service.

More here on coverage areas

Size: The modem size is either going to be super tiny, or huge, as seen from these pictures

Questions remaining:
- There’s something called an RM10 “Nationwide Access Fee”, which presumably means that when you subscribe to their service, you only get it for your area? Does this mean state, or area (eg, Selangor OR Petaling Jaya?)

Also, lastly there are some tips on which package is worth it for you, and also some speculation on the eventual speed of the service at MalaysianWireless.com. There seems to also be a call for feedback from P2P users as well, so leave your comments.

Remember, all services are always fastest when they first come out - but what happens later? It’ll be interesting to see if this higher pricing point will enable P1 to deliver.

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.

A lot of you are Googling for the results of the WiMax license awardance - in short the people who won were YTL, Greenpacket, Redtone, AsiaSpace (who is AsiaSpace anyway?).

I will be writing more on this, but in the meantime, you can read Jefrey’s take on the winners, and what they said.

Based on the description of this product on the Green Packet website, the SONmetro 212A Subscriber Unit, and my conversations with one anonymous reseller, it’s possible that Green Packet might launch 3MBps consumer wireless broadband packages this year. The technology looks very interesting in theory - seems to be mostly immune to line of sight or signal strength/velocity issues. Read this excerpts: “receiving data from tens of different neighbors from different locations per second while driving”, “one can still communicate over 1.5Mbps while traveling at speed up to 300 km/hour“.

So, in theory, you could be downloading some data pretty quickly, and driving above 3 times the local highway limit at the same time. Wow!

As a marketing person and occasional Ah Beng, I imagine a great publicity stunt they could use to launch the service, involving a professional driver, a sports car, some drifting, a series of internal cameras (one pointed at the laptop, more mounted on the car roof and hood), a heavily strapped in laptop user in the back seat, and a nice, empty stretch of road and a live broadcast.

To Green Packet readers (and particularly to Michael Lai): If you use the idea, be sure to give us credit (and we take cash too, haha.) Oh, and I wouldn’t mind being the strapped in laptop user even, if you get both a really good driver and my blood type on file as well…

Sure, we were late on the news of his resignation, but I hope we’ve redeemed ourselves by being one of the first to tell you where he’s going next.According to an industry insider (from a company working closely with Green Packet), after resigning as CEO of TMNet, Michael Lai will join the highly hyped Green Packet Berhad. No word yet on his position, but speculation says he might be the new CEO.

He might make quite a difference, judging by the some favourable comments from industry people. Michael is currently on holiday and not in KL. Word is he left TM Net because of unfair corporate structure - underlings were promoted, and key performance indicators for the National Broadband Plan are no longer in his hands, making his role very small.

It is also said that there will no new CEO replacing Michael Lai (there is a current acting CEO, a Malay lady named Zainab Hashim), as there is no need to - operations of TM Net will be going to the main TM Group. Products and marketing of Streamyx will go to TM Retail, and Technical & Content will go to TM Wholesale (who has been doing a shitty job as of late.) TMNet will be handling content like BlueHyppo & the music portal.

However, the industry insider goes on to say that Streamyx will improve drastically in a year - this new restructuring will bring younger people to the helm (between 30-40), to replace the traditional guys. And…it won’t be called TM Net Streamyx anymore - it will be TM Streamyx.

Green Packet Berhad is pretty well backed, with support from Energy, Water & Communications Minister Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik. To quote Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik: “Green Packet had proven itself to be one of Malaysia’s technology companies with an impressive track record locally and was also creating a significant impact in international telecommunication services. ” Check out this link on The Star - Landmark Green Packet Deal and this link, on Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia. You can also see their corporate fact sheet on GreenPacket.com.

So, will Green Packet be able to “gerak” broadband to the “Rakyat”? They will benefit from Michael’s marketing savvy (as who else knows the weaknesses of the main monopoly ISP better?), but let’s hope their service holds up as well. Congratulations to Michael Lai, and Green Packet.

More updates as times goes by…remember nothing here is guaranteed to be accurate, and is based on speculation and insider info. Let’s hope this new round of restructuring in TM and Green Packet will bring about some much needed change to us, the broadband users.