Hello. This starts off as a “summary type post” written inspired by the following article on BusinessWeek. The article : Ten Stories that Defined Broadband in 2008 actually talks about broadband globally (with a definite US slant), and I recommend you read it before reading my comments below - which are relevant to Malaysia.

And then later on, it’s followed by a summary of some hopes for 2009, some random comments, and further developments for RedesignMalaysia.com in 2009.

1. Optical cable cuts bookmark the year

A total of three cables went out throughout the year 2008, but thankfully, internet access here wasn’t quite as badly affected as it was last time when the Taiwan earthquake affected our connection locally. As this time, it was only if you were surfing a website that was hosted in Europe or countries close to it that you would be affected.

Details on what happened here at MalaysianWireless

2. Peering Troubles Disrupt the Internet

Probably irrelevant to most Malaysians, as it is mainly a US issue between Cogent, Telia & Sprint.

3. The unwelcome rise of metered broadband.

In the time to come, it looks like local ISPs such as Streamyx will continue throttling P2P downloads. So much for “unlimited broadband”. It’s easy to market something as “unlimited”, and while most of this may be fine and unnoticed for newbie users, those that have legitimate needs for things such as video streaming, P2P and online gaming will definitely feel that they are getting shortchanged.

It remains to be seen if TM Streamyx will either:

a) provide true “unlimited” access to all
b) admit in a way that “unlimited” was a misleading term, and start offering uncapped packages at different price levels.
c) continue exactly as the way it is

Option A is unlikely, Option B is possible (but will look bad for them), and Option C unfortunately, is the most likely.

If you’re interested to see what other local ISPs to do cope with P2P traffic, read more here.

4. Wireless Broadband Takes Wings, Thanks To The iPhone 3G

There is an astounding amount of Malaysians with iPhones (well, at least among my friends). Considering that its not officially launched here, and neither do Maxis, Digi or Celcom support it officially, its quite interesting that people here have taken the trouble to crack the phone and get it to work. You cannot get an iPhone from the local Apple store - the only way is to buy it from overseas, or get it from a grey market retailer.

But anyway, the topic here is basically surfing on mobile. Local mobile wireless surfing is rapidly growing due to devices such as the iPhone, and smart phones. Which brings us to the likely conclusion of what we may see more of soon: Phone + Laptop + Internet Access packages. This is a good thing, provided that the package actually makes things cost less rather than more.

5. Planet Broadband

There are now 400 million broadband users in the planet. Malaysia still lags behind in terms of speed, price and availability. Meanwhile, Singapore which is like, 50 times smaller than Malaysia can offer broadband packages of 100 Mbps and in the United Kingdom, there are 50Mbps connections available.

Meanwhile, in Malaysia, we’re stuck with an average of 1-2, with a upper limit of 5-10 Mbps which tend to be for expensive corporate packages. There’s a rumour going around that Google wanted to host a datacenter in Malaysia, however, there is insufficient bandwidth available for their needs.

6. Outages become commonplace

In 2008, even Google, Yahoo and Amazon went down due to increased load. Malaysians will find its nothing new as we frequently are unable to access all kinds of websites on a regular basis, though, not due to problems on the part of the websites themself - rather, our connection to the internet.

7. Clearwire and the divergent fortunes of Wimax

Wimax wise in Malaysia, P1 (Packet One) Wimax is gaining some ground, together with the unfortunately obcure AsiaSpace Amax (which seems to cover only select parts in Klang Valley). YTL has missed the deadline in implementing Wimax, while Redtone has launched corporate broadband services in Sabah. More news here.

8. Troubles Return To Telecom Land

In the US, the banking, automotive, property and telecoms industry were affected by the credit crunch. Locally though, we have a dubious situation: Not many companies are affected, simply because there aren’t that many companies and choices around.

9. Good-bye, Mr Martin

While this references an FCC chairman who is largely responsible for US Telecommunication related items, it’ll be interesting to see how Barack Obama’s new team and new FCC leader will affect connectivity in the US and consequently, the world. Malaysia is very much dependent on international connectivity as well - eg, most of us use MSN Messenger, and use Google for search, etc.

Conclusion & Other News

Mobile Number Portability was probably one of the bigger things to happen in 2008 for the local telecommunications industry, and definitely shook things up. Both Digi and Celcom seem to be benefiting from this so far.

Btw, there’s now a new mobile operator apparently! If you like the novelty of having your number start with 010 (eg 010-3456789), check out XOX or news here. And if you find the service sucks, you can always keep the number, and switch operator.

Let’s hope 2009 is a better year for broadband in Malaysia! Hopefully the competitiveness happening with Mobile Number Portability in the telco field will spill over into broadband, or result in some smart “joint packages” of sorts. For example, an incentive for telcos to keep their customers from switching: Offer a broadband + mobile service package to make it cheaper/more convenient overall for customers to stay with them.

If you’re wondering what I use personally, and my thoughts on it as a consumer (it may help you make a decision if you have similiar usage patterns): If you’re planning to use a mobile broadband package: DON’T USE MAXIS BROADBAND. I did, and it was terrible. Slower than dialup although they told me my area was covered. I’m still using them for my mobile service, however that may change. There were quite a bit of dropped calls in November 2008, as well as recently, I find that SMSes need to be recent.

The BlackBerry Bold promotion for Celcom is quite tempting (switch your line to Celcom, get a free Blackberry Bold if you use above RM500 a month), though I wonder if their mobile coverage is decent (I used to have quite a bit of issues reaching people on Celcom numbers - including one of the children of someone in upper Celcom management!). I’m still using Streamyx at home/work, and its been mostly reliable in my area (Aman Suria/Dataran Prima/Tropicana/Kelana Jaya). However I’ll probably be considering the following options for broadband too: P1 (as soon as they launch in my area), or Digi or Celcom (depending if I get the Bold).

Meantime, in 2009 I resolve to update this blog more often. Hopefully even a few times a week, however most likely shorter, “breaking news” type articles. We’re still the number one result for “malaysia broadband” on Google as of 2007, 2008 and now 2009 - and hopefully, I will be able to update this blog more often and add new features (such as the broadband coverage map which is due for a rehaul).

Given that Advertlets.com (which is my day job and 1.8 year old baby startup) is set to expand quite a bit in 2009 with a new injection of funding and staff, I hope to be able to also put together a volunteer team for RedesignMalaysia to make sure this site continues to expand as well. Drop me a mail at RedesignMalaysia@Advertlets.com if you’re interested to contribute. Telcos and broadband providers are also welcome to contact me to share details - things like your IP ranges, and coverage information will be very useful. Cheers!

PS: Also look out for The Star this Sunday. Why? Oh, no particular reason

There’s a new site up at www.saveandinvest.my . The purpose of the site is to encourage Malaysians to save money, and share their tips with others.

The part which I feel might interest you is the following: The prize of free broadband for a year - a 1 yearsubscription to Celcom Broadband for the best tips submitted.

I’ve posted up two tips so far: (go vote for them!)

Phone Bills : TM Net Streamyx Combo for new residences (waive fixed line rental fee)
It links back to this site (of course, haha), which shares the list of ISPs with pricings.

General : List of broadband service providers in Malaysia with prices
Two, a tip on how you can save on your phone bills through the TMNet Streamyx Combo which waives your fixed line bills.

Check out the site, and do post your own tips as well. I’ll be just as happy if one of the blog readers here read this.

Will be posting more broadband tips soon Including how to choose your broadband provider and cut down your costs, various pricings of broadband service providers compared, and more.

Meantime, you can check out also what some other Advertlets Bloggers have to say about the site:

Party girl Amanda Choe shares how you can get unique pieces and lower prices at flea markets
Naomi Tham writes about how sleeping early can save you money.
Student LogicYuan is smart and suggests charging your phone at work/at school.
UncleJosh talks about the growing global financial slowdown and offers some tips on how to go on dates cheaper
AprilCherrie takes you on a step by step tutorial on how to post up your tips on the site

Till then, cheers.

This news struck me as a surprise, and was relatively quietly announced - I didn’t get to know about it until someone told me recently.

Apparently, TM is the lead player in a consortium to implement an Asia-US submarine cable, formed by AT&T Inc. (USA), Bharti AirTel (India), Government of Brunei Darussalam (Brunei), British Telecom Global Network Services (UK), CAT Telekom (Thailand), Eastern Telecommunications Philippines Inc. (Philippines), Indosat (Indonesia), Pacific Communications Pte Ltd (Cambodia), Philippines Long Distance Telephone Co. (Philippines), PT Telkom (Indonesia), Saigon Postal Corporation (Vietnam), StarHub (Singapore), Telstra (Australia), Telecom New Zealand International (New Zealand), Viettel (Vietnam) and Vietnam Post & Telecommunications Group of Vietnam (Vietnam).

The cable is called the AAG, or Asia America Gateway. The AAG will provide a seamless direct link between the US and other Asian countries via one single cable. It also has the ability to be expanded to Australia, India, Africa, and Europe. Spanning over 20,000 km, AAG will link Malaysia to the US via Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and the West coast of the US. The cable system is designed to provide a capacity of up to 1.92 Terabits per second of data bandwidth.
It will have an initial capacity of 480Gbps.

TM holds 9% in the equity of the project (majority shareholder). The contract is worth approximately $US500 Million. (Which means TM’s 9% equity is $US45 million / RM157million).

A quote from CEO, Datuk Abdul Wahid Omar: “While we are present in 13 countries in the region and involved in seven existing major submarine cable consortiums, this initiative is still one of the biggest we have undertaken. It will provide TM with additional 60Gbps of capacity, which will help reduce any future potential congestion we may face.”

Another quote: As the AAG is from a single cable network, not only will it have improvements in lowering latency, it will also simultaneously ramp up the international bandwidth capacity to Malaysia at more competitive costs.”

“This impressive joint-effort will go a long way in increasing broadband uptake in this region, which will in turn increase the overall appeal for global investments and increase the competitiveness of the countries benefiting from direct links to the Asia-America Gateway,”

Analysis: Assuming this goes well, Malaysia will surpass Singapore and Thailand in being a regional hub. That means, just like how Malacca was a hub for international trade in the days of yore, Malaysia could be come a hub for international traffic.

Congratulations TM! Let’s hope this happens soon, and that we can see some speed improvements by early next year. My internet connection is getting slower as of late…and from the news article, this project is scheduled to be completed only by December 2008…

You can read more here, on IT Wire, or on TM’s press release section on its official website.

You might be either surprised, or not surprised at all, but Earl’s connection speed is back to terrible again.

The Lowyat.net boys have their say on earlier visit here: TMNet CEO Visits Streamyx Customer, Earl-Ku’s House

Rigged? TC_Boy has this to say: “There was an article posted here (on Lowyat.net) before about how ISPs usually mark certain ips to be given max bandwidth & high priority because it belongs to broadband speed test sites. They have fooled the user and the press. The speed maybe for real too but only for him or his DSLAM.”

Hmm…

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…

The Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission has released a mandatory standard for Quality of broadband service in Malaysia starting 1 January 2008.

Here are the conclusions(Applies to all ISPs):

• 80% of installation orders must be fulfilled within 24 hours from the time and date requested by the customer.
• 80% of service restoration must be completed within 24 hours from the time and date requested by the customer.
• 90% of billing complaints must be resolved in 15 business days of receipt of the complaint.
• Network latency to the nearest edge node(BRAS), shall be no more than 85ms(95% of the time)
• Bandwidth utilisation between the user and the nearest edge node of the regional broadband network(BRAS) should be no less than 80% of the subscribed level(95% of the me)-it means local sites will load faster
• Packet loss should not exceed 1% between the user and the nearest edge node of the regional broadband network(BRAS)

BRAS-Broadband Remote Access Server

On top of all theses mandatory standards, all ISPs must produce a report to MCMC every six months.

Mandatory Standards for Quality of Service(Broadband Access Service)-PDF file

The question is:

• What if the customers are still not satisfied on the service offered? (MCMC will be judging the service based on the report produced by the ISPs, what about consumers?)
• Do I still pay RM77 when service is always not available, or when the technical guy is taking his sweet time to come over to my place?
• What happens to the ISPs if the mandatory standards are not fulfilled?
• Why “best effort” still remains? Does MCMC support these terms?
• Why wait until January,2008? Does it mean that we will suffer until then and no action can be taken on the ISP?

Comments are most welcomed.

Update: You can read more on this at : http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/486176

Looking at the following URLs, StreamyxSucks.com and Sohai Streamyx Technician…

You begin to wonder whether there’s a better way to improve the situation than just complaining.

Here are a few:

- Go for the competition. Visit the ISP Page. Tell ALL your friends - there are more than 16 ISPs in Malaysia. Not one.
- Be persistent. Find shortcuts. Bypass authority. Fixed your Streamyx problems? Tell people exactly how you managed to get around it.
- Volunteer. Think you can do a better job? Volunteer part time at the Streamyx call centre.
- If you’ve got lots of money - support RedesignMalaysia. We don’t make much from this. Or invest in up and coming broadband companies.
- If you have media - interview us. Highlight the situation. Did you know there are financial penalties for certain companies under Streamyx if the complaint reaches the media?
- Any more suggestions?

I’m sure a lot of you would have heard about the “Call 100″ promotion that TM is currently running, where they say you can call one number to reach all things TM - Celcom, Let’s Talk, TM Net, TM Home Line, etc. Recently I had to try it, about a week ago, but ended up having to call TM Net directly.

Hotline:

100 - this didn’t work, although I selected TM Net, it lead to a perpetually busy tone.
1300881515 - this worked.

I don’t see why this should be happening. Lack of integration perhaps?
Website:

http://tm.net.my - this doesn’t work - leads to a server not found page
http://www.tm.net.my - this works

It should be standard practice to also have a domain accessible even without the www.
On the brighter side, I dropped by a TM Point recently, and I would say their new Payment Kiosk is pretty alright, tested that out too to pay my TM Net bill, since my account was deactivated, and after I made the payment, an hour or two after that my account was activated again, without me having to call them to notify that I made my payment. That was a pleasant surprise. However, their other channels need some work.