Some of you might be wondering why our site was down - don’t worry, we weren’t hacked, we’ve just been busy with Advertlets and some new projects…which don’t just involve web design, but also the future of broadband in Malaysia. Somewhere in those few months we forgot to renew our hosting for this site, thanks for the reminders.

We have been talking to 3 ISPs - some new, some old, and the results of which you will see coming to fruition in the next 1 month. Maybe sooner. Meantime, we are looking at having more contributing writers to help us maintain this site - e-mail me for details.

Anyway, if you’re new here, do check out one of the most useful pages on the site - The ISP list : Bet you didn’t know there are more than 15 ISPs in Malaysia. We’ll be updating it soon with new ISPs, including the recently launched IZZI.

Lastly, expect RedesignMalaysia 2.0 in Q1/Q2 2008. Great to be back, sorry for going missing…we won’t do it again

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.

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

I used to think that Singaporeans get a better deal (compared to Malaysia) when it came to telecommunication services, as they were a country with double our broadband penetration, and better technology laid out (fiber vs copper), as well as better competition between companies.

However, it appears they suffer due to a monopoly as well.

Check out Consumers United Against Starhub Price Hike

Here’s an excerpt. Sounds a lot like what we’ve been saying too, strangely enough.

This is THE time we, the consumers, stand UNITED and send a strong message to monopolistic businesses and instituitions in Singapore, which constantly subject us to price hikes and unfair business practices.

These are the following reasons on where we stand and why YOU should sign on this petition:

1. Starhub’s terms and conditions are unfair and baised against the consumer. We should be allowed avenues to terminate the contract in the event of price hike, without incurring penalties.

2. New price hike should apply to new sign-ups only, and NOT to consumers with existing contracts.

I love this part in particular…what if we did the same to TMNet?

4. Finally, we urged all Starhub cable TV subscribers to continue paying the current rate for their subscribtion and ignore the price hike until Starhub has given us, the consumers, a satisfactory response to our complaints.

On the other hand here’s some good news. Malaysians note - our cable coverage for football is the best in the region. Malaysia (Astro) beats Singapore, Indonesia, & Thailand! Check this out - “Malaysian Sports cable TV Viewers Get Best Deal“. Thanks to IZ for the tip.

How many of you here are bloggers? How many of you here use Streamyx? How many of you think broadband here needs a kick in the ass? Read on to find out how we can create greater competition in the ISP sector in Malaysia - and how we can give other smaller ISPs a marketing edge against Streamyx.

As some of you might know, me and the team at Josh Lim Ventures are responsible for this site , which campaigns for better broadband internet services here and advocates reform and competition. However, more recently, we’ve launched a blog advertising network, www.advertlets.com - an asian blog advertising network, which allows local advertisers to be heard over hundreds of local blogs. One of the most unique features to Advertlets is blog demographics, which we collect using a propietary polling system. That means, advertisers can choose which blogs to advertise on, segmented by the gender, age range and profession of each blog’s visitors. Despite a certain minister’s remarks, through our research and polling we have found that the majority of Malaysian bloggers are not unemployed women…but actually, female students aged 21-25.

Anyway, we’ve somehow managed to combine our interests of blogging and improving broadband here. In summary, we have launched a new service that would enable ISPs to compete against each other and target each others clients directly in online advertising, even with a limited budget. In short, it means for example, through our advertising system across blogs, Digi Broadband or Jaring for instance, could target verified TM Net users and offer a better deal to them. This is done through a system that display different ads across hundreds of Malaysian blogs based on users IP addresses (each local ISP is allocated a certain ISP range).

I would appreciate any assistance for RedesignMalaysia members in getting this out to the media, or the the attention of the ISPs. Please post these on your blogs too. We’ve done a lot of work on this - and we’re sure that this will be significant “ammunition” for up and coming ISPs who need to accumulate a good user base to be able to deliver good service. Thanks.

Bernice Low writes on Tete-A-Tech on CNet a much needed, erudite explanation of the current situation that’s going on - TMNet promising unlimited bandwidth, but delivering much less. Although most of us here are probably aware of these issues, its good to have a more elaboration of opinion than the usual “TMNet sucks! Cheat ppl one!” sentiment.

And of course, addresses the whole lame duck argument that TMNet makes for bandwidth throttling - about Bittorrent traffic being illegal, therefore they are justified in blocking it. Interestingly enough, has anyone checked out Bittorrent.com lately? It’s looking less like a free for all piracy fest, and now has a level of legitimacy somewhere between Youtube and the iTunes music store.
Some quotes from the article: “Similarly with a telephone or mobile line. If it is used to harass someone (stalkers, heavy breathing, etc.), does that mean the service provider must be held responsible? “….”In short, it’s none of TM Net’s business what its consumers use their bandwidth and Internet connection for, because TM Net itself will never be made liable for any of those illegal activities.”

And on the issue of service quality:

Quote: “Here’s my theory on what TM Net is doing: It is generating profit or trying to do so by being as measly and Scrooge-like as possible with bandwidth, while charging the maximum public-tolerable amount for that same bandwidth.”
Which brings to mind a very real possibility: TMNet is committing fraud/misrepresentation to its customers.

Though thanks to the wtf inducing “best effort” clause included in every customers agreement, that kind of negates the possibility of legal action. Or does it?

So, what can we do about it, from a legal and consumer standpoint? Your suggestions are welcome.

I was just searching around on theedgedaily.com, and I came across an interesting piece of news - TheEdgeDaily : Gov’t may allow foreign broadband providers.

Apparently, according to the article: the government may allow new local and foreign players to provide broadband service if the existing ones do not make the service more affordable and improve the infrastructure.

The article also states a quote from Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik: - “The directive from the Prime Minster is that national development plans override all business considerations.”

Seems like great news, doesn’t it? It’s about time! Competition will shake things up here! But guess which year the article is from? This year, 2007? Late 2006, maybe? Nope.

The article was from the year 2004.

Yet we don’t have a single formidable foreign player now, do we? Sigh.

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.