OK!!! So, I was at the launch yesterday… much happened. The majority of the launch involved some people talking on the stage… not very sure about what. There was a celebrity there… his name was Yorais!!! Apparently, he’s some hip rapper type from the ghetto part of Kuala Lumpur. I left the launch shortly after the Yorais guy came up to the stage… mainly because I’m not really into rap.
Anyway, on to the things that people want to know (no there will be no disclosure of vulnerabilities) (keep in mind these findings are based on the Huddle at 4/5 signal strength):
- Latency appears to be “fairly” unaffected by signal (low, medium, high, not including blinking red feverishly attempting to connect to a base station) – REJOICE GAMERS!!! Sorry to bring you guys back down to earth though, but I hope your games (or your voice comm programs ie. Teamspeak, Ventrilo) don’t transfer much data… or even Bentley owners will have to trade in their cars to pay for the data.
- speed was actually pretty impressive (despite the fact I’m still not impressed by the 4G aspect of things) – we managed approx 4Mbps of downloads, while at the same time doing a speedtest which reported 5.7Mbps – for a grand total of approx 10Mbps total throughput
Downside is, while the launch was definitely a success from a certain point of view, everything that followed wasn’t so much. Web server failz, authentication failz, were amongst the issues that popped up almost instantly after the launch. Little things that were neglected to be mentioned even in the fine print decided to make a guest appearance as well; an RM50 “activation” fee even for those who pre-registered, a minimum of RM30 balance in the account to retain an active line, a minimum commitment monthly of RM30, and well, possibly more that I forgot.
A quick look from the outside would tell you that a little too much was spent on hype, a little too little on getting good technical guys in, and not forgetting, not inviting those technical guys from an interesting website called HackInTheBox to the soft-launch (which was entirely the fault of ONE person I choose not to name).
Me being a nice person and all, I will say that from a non-technical standpoint, Yes 4G in its entirety didn’t have such an amazing launch after all. But from a technical aspect, the network itself is rather impressive (human failures aside). Give them a little time, Yes 4G may not end up being as bad as you think – especially considering the direct competition – as long as you ignore the prices and slightly odd fine print that has surfaced. Their issues are fixable… (at least until I get to test their network once it’s fully loaded)
Is the Yes 4G service the “earth shattering”, “heart stopping”, “incredible” service that YTL made it out to be? Not quite right now, but it’s fairly safe to say at the very least that they have the ability to expand to a much more impressive state (not saying that they will, just that they could).