So I heard an interview over at BFM about the new Telekom Malaysia UNIFI service. A number of things occured to me:
Method of delivery; the guys over at Telekom Malaysia decided to lay brand new fibre to deliver the new UNIFI service. Why? Sure, fibre is more future proof compared to copper but it’s also a helluva lot more expensive. Reason why I’m asking this is… TM can’t even deliver anywhere close to what copper is able to carry (which is 24Mbps UP and 8Mbps DOWN AFAIK). Why spend multiple times more on fibre optics to deliver speeds that could easily be delivered via copper at a fraction of the cost (even taking into consideration relaying copper)? In a country where ISPs are clambering to deliver state of the art infrastructure like South Korea or Japan, sure, I’d believe that they want the most future proof infrastructure available… but in Malaysia? I’m going to guess that a bunch of people are going to “find” keys to new Mercedes S500’s in their mailboxes… and I sure as fuck ain’t one of them. Do YOU really think that Telekom Malaysia has YOU as a consumer in mind? Well sure, if you consider them wondering how they can milk EVERY LAST CENT out of the Malaysian public as keeping you in mind.
Rollout is slow; Hey bud… the roll out is slow because it’s Telekom Malaysia not because it’s fibre optics 🙂
Knowledgeable Telekom Malaysia Operator; Even Freda was laughing at this oxymoron… not entirely sure if she really was… but it seemed awfully convenient 🙂
Packages; Again, tying in to delivery method… 5/10/20Mbps… all easily deliverable via copper at a fraction of the cost. You can tell yourself that it’s for future expansion of packages beyond the limits of copper/ADSL2, but then again we all know how “fast” Telekom Malaysia expands all these things right? Heck, Malaysia jumped on the Internet bandwagon before South Korea… look at us stomping all over them now!!! Wait… no… we’re stuck in the Jurassic thanks to Telekom Malaysia.
Underpromise/Overdeliver; Hmm… gotta say it has a tendency of being the other way around with Telekom Malaysia 🙂
Fair price; Sure… it might be fair now, but give it a couple of months until they enforce a data cap and I’m pretty sure you’ll be rethinking that statement all the while frowning at the contract you signed 🙂
Economy of Scale; Err… pretty sure that doesn’t work when Telekom Malaysia has a huge monopoly and we’re still in the dark ages when it comes to Internet. Kindly refer to past 20 years or so, thanks.
Usage caps; If you buy a 20Mbps connection you should GET a 20Mbps connection IMHO. The data cap is already there, it’s limited by the 20Mbps… enforcing a SECONDARY cap is RIDICULOUS and just another way for Telekom Malaysia to get away with ridiculous contention ratios not to mention archaic infrastructure. What this means is basically that Telekom Malaysia is attempting to milk every last cent out of your pocket despite the fact that the vast majority of Internet users in this Internet-God forsaken country ALREADY HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO BUY FROM THEM. If a buy a Ferrari (20Mbps connection) tomorrow and am told that I can only drive it for 120 hours a month (rhetorical 120GB a month) or my car would turn into a Lemon – I would sure as hell go to Ferrari and insert my brand new keys up the managers ass. As to whether they will impose the cap or not… guess what? Commercial suicide or no, as I said earlier, the majority of the Internet using populace in Malaysia doesn’t have any REAL choice. Besides, what would you do if they did… cancel your contract and pay the penalty before moving to a subpar wireless provider?
Apologies for the long ranty post, but as should be apparent, this is one of the topics that never fails to get my blood boiling. Maybe some day in the future that will change – note I never mentioned how far in the future.