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.

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:

In case you are wondering why Streamyx has been slow these few days, the following links would tell you why:

� There’s also more on the forums� and blogs - users discussing affected performance in their areas:

There used to be announcement on the service interruption right on the front page of TM.net.my, but its now its been replaced by an announcement of their new Clickers authorized service outlet in Johor. Sigh. Really gives you an idea of their priorities, doesn’t it? While this service upgrade/interruption will hopefully result in better service, you would think that they would have the resources not to upgrade in such a disruptive manner, or be able to implement some kind of backup/interim system to make sure service isn’t interrupted.

Anyway, please leave a comment on broadband service in your area, as it would be helpful to other people. Thanks.

Josh

Jeff Ooi of JeffOoi.com fame is organizing a Streamyx User Group Meeting for users from the Klang Valley on September 15th 2006. This is an excellent opportunity for your views to be heard, so do come in person - don’t ask someone else to go for you, or pass the message along to me to pass along to them, get what I mean? Its not going to be just a PR thing with a customer service representative - the CEO of TMNet, Michael Lai will be there, as well as heads of various departments within TMNet. An overview of what the Streamyx User Group is for (excerpts from Jeff Ooi’s first post on the subject of the Streamyx user focus group and the second post on the upcoming meeting)

So, do take part in the Streamyx User Group. Details are available here at JeffOoi.com - Streamyx User Group meeting confirmed. If you are curious as to how the previous event went last year, you can check it out here at BrandMalaysia.com - Bloggers Clicked With TMNet. If you are confirmed to come for the event, let us know too (cc your RSVP e-mail to info@redesignmalaysia.com). Let’s take a proactive step for better broadband, not just complain about it.

Josh

Found this recently on The New Straits Times - on the same day that we launched RedesignMalaysia.com, Ian Miles Cheong from Ipoh’s letter to the New Straits Times was published. He says:

Read the full letter at The New Straits Times : Time to buck up, Telekom

There’s more dissatisfaction online as well…

Suanie.net has a list of Bloggers Pissed With Streamyx. It covers several posts from different bloggers on connection problems, activation problems, and general rage.

Paul of PaulTan.org says that Streamyx is pointless, and continues to add the following:

I’m just curious. Is there anyone at all who is satisfied with Streamyx’s services? Or are you pissed off like them? Send us your links and blog entries, perhaps we can compile a special page for your complaints…

Josh

We really hope you noticed the map on top, it’s very obvious. If you click any of the placemarks, you’ll notice that each area has specific comments. (Not all do though - try USJ and Bandar Utama as an example of how comments should be for each area.) In the course of the next few weeks, we’ll be adding more information. However, in a sense we are limited because we can only infer based on what we can find online, and comments from people we know. This obviously limits us.

So…we’ll like to invite you to submit more information about your area,� as comments on broadband coverage in a specific area best come from the people who actually live there.

For example, if you’re from Dataran Prima, you could say that “Broadband here seems to be available most of the time although slow sometimes, except for several occurences where the network configuration seems to change overnight, and I can only connect directly from the modem to my laptop - I can’t seem to get it to work with the router without reconfiguring it all over again. I tried calling TM (and was put on hold for nearly 15 minutes)� to send people, and no one came even after lots of shouting for many days…until I found my own network guy to fix the problem…”. You can see that was specific, and that applies true for me actually. What are your comments?

E-mail us - with …

1. Your name
2. The name of your area (eg, SS2, Petaling Jaya)
3. Which service provider(s) you are using, and which package if applicable
4. Using for home or office use?
5. Your comments on broadband coverage in your area

Send it to this e-mail address or register then leave a comment on this post:� info@redesignmalaysia.com

Josh

“They see the pennies instead of the pounds, losing sight of the ‘pot of gold’ in the distance. They are interested only in making profits and protecting their investments, putting the future of the whole industry in jeopardy,” he said.

Read the full article at The Star Online Tech Central

Generally, the people from TMNET in attendance, displayed a propensity for cutting straight to the issue head on. The manner of which they readily admitted imperfections, while contemplating suggestions to overcome them, was reassuring, and reflected a management culture that is more customer-oriented and result-specific than one that I was expecting.
…From the start, we breached the subject of speed. When discussing this issue, there is a need to firstly understand that there are two sides of a coin. Heads and tails. It was clear that while TMNET is struggling to give their customers a heads up on services received, the customers however, are feeling that they are getting the tail end of the deal.

Read the full article at Brand Malaysia.com

Related articles:
Screenshots: Calling Streamyx users in Klang Valley
…we will take the positive and productive approach to listen to feedbacks from Streamyx customers about their user experience, suggestions for QoS improvement, and perhaps test out new Streamyx products and services which are in the pipeline.