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 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.

According to a very reliable source, we got to know the following about the current P2P blocking issue facing Streamyx users:

- TMNet is currently in the process of testing their “Volume-Base system”
- As its still in the development phase, the call center won’t be able to tell you much.
- The block is implemented from 6AM - Midnight.
- The P2P block was implemented after the Taiwan earthquake because they noticed that “p2p downloading was adding to performance degradation on their network”
- “Weather permitting”, the block will be lifted at the end of January, when the Taiwan circuit is fully restored

Based on the above information, and bandwidth usage starting to show up on bills, we speculate that TMNet will release new packages to cater for heavy broadband users. To be fair, this should result in cheaper packages for light users - and not more expensive packages for heavy broadband users, presumably. As for the throttling, well - let’s hope its really lifted when the Taiwan circuit is restored, and maybe too, it’ll all get settled in the next two days.

This is for all the users of P2P & Bittorrent using TMNet Streamyx. Yes, your P2P traffic is being blocked and throttled.

Whether eDonkey, BearShare, iMesh, SoulSeek, eMule, Kazaa, Kazaa Lite, Shareaza, Napster, Limewire, Azereus, Bitcomet, uTorrent, BitSpirit, BitConjurer, BitTornado…or even those using Skype or the iTunes music store (yes, that too is being blocked).

Make yourself heard. Banners for now. An action plan soon. Freedom to use our promised “unlimited” connections, hopefully soon.

Update: Thanks to forum user AZ10 on Cari.com.my, we have a Chinese translation of the above!

这是为P2P & Bittorrent 的所有用户使用TMNet Streamyx 。是, 您的P2P 交通被阻拦和被节流。是否eDonkey 、BearShare, iMesh, SoulSeek, eMule, Kazaa 、Kazaa Lite,Shareaza 、Napster 、Limewire 、Azereus, Bitcomet, uTorrent, BitSpirit、BitConjurer, BitTornado… 甚至那些使用Skype 或iTunes 音乐商店(是, 太被阻拦) 。做自己听见。横幅暂时。行动计划很快。自由使用我们的被许诺的”� 限的” 连接, 有希望地很快。

Bonus: (Lost in translation type humour) If you use Google’s automatic Chinese > English translator, the posting which was originally meant to say “For those that don’t understand English, read the Chinese version” gets mangled into “Chinese people do not understand the purpose of English”. Well, I’m a Chinese myself, but I’ve always found English pretty useful…

A letter recently came to my attention, and the writer has informed me that he is “actually at a loss” and “going around by any means possible trying to get TM’s attention to fix this problem.”

In summary: Redzuan has been waiting for a stunning three weeks for a complaint to be resolved. A quote - “Three weeks to rectify an issue with the customer himself chasing for updates and followups daily in the past week is something unheard of in a country that prides itself for having a supposed 1st class infrastructure. ”

Perhaps the TM Net Staff who read this (Yes, we know there at least 3 of you…) could attend to him? You can get his contact from me or refer to the report number. The bold emphasis on the letter is mine and not of the author:

� Translation: We have another satellite in space now, and that’s a good thing for broadband here.� Malaysia Boleh! Soon we’re going to have a bolehnaut and teh tarik in space too, but that’s a different story.

Translation: This can shape up to be a significant challenge to TM Net Streamyx’s market dominance. As you might notice from this Wikipedia link on Maxis, they basically own Measat-3. Although the main purpose of the satellite is to extend the coverage of sister company Astro’s satellite services, it is very likely that the broadband capabilities of the new satellite will be marketed as under the Maxis Broadband umbrella rather than as an Astro broadband thing. Maxis already has very good dominance in the urban mobile telecommunications sector, so getting existing mobile customers to subscribe to a broadband package shouldn’t be too far a stretch, rather than trying to convince Astro watchers to get broadband.� This is purely my speculation, and adding credence to it is the fact that� Astro did have a short-lived trial of internet services, but no news has been hard since.

Translation: No more coverage issues. No 5KM radius DSLAM limitation. No more� not enough ports problems. No more reliance on old copper cabling. Rather than try to depend on the underground, broadband can now come from the heavens above, and anywhere with a clear line of sight to the sky should be able to receive a satellite broadband signal. Bonus: The launch vehicle of the satellite is called the “Proton Breeze M”. No, it’s not a new car model from national carmarker Proton Berhad, but rather, this link should explain it.

Let’s end with two questions:
1. Do you think satellite broadband internet services� are already available currently, as of today, right now? Yes or No? (This one I know the answer to. It might not be what you think.� Btw, if the answer is yes, it’s not Measat providing it. If it’s no, then no one� lah. What do you think?)
2. If satellite broadband were already available here…how much would you pay per month for a good, steady 1-2MBps connection?

James pointed me out to an interesting forum thread. It details the story of a guy who through persistence and documentation, actually managed to get a rebate from Streamyx.� Basically, he was paying for a 1MBPs line, but for some reason, was capped at 512KBPs.� Here’s an excerpt from the forum:

You can read the whole forum thread here: Malaysia Bloggers Forum - Damn Streamyx!

�