Malaysia Broadband

After reading through the third annual report from Saïd Business School, I have to say that Malaysia is way behind Singapore and China!!! Can you imagine Malaysia which has fibre optics is behind our counterpart!!!

I am speechless at this moment. Please read through here.

This is another blow to Malaysia as past prime ministers of Malaysia have stressed upon the greatest infrastructures of Malaysia's internet capabilities. It looks as if Malaysia is falling behind other development countries too. It is not true if you are considering Malaysia is on par with some African countries which I would decline to mention over here.

In short, Malaysia needs to improve on its quality in providing better services to its people. It is not enough for excuses like "Oh, the internet is slow due to the fault of a submarine cable in Taiwan" or "Oh, the internet is slow because there is over crowded IPs in your area". These are not valid excuses. If there is a problem, you should always have a backup plan just in case there are failures in the primary pipeline. If you are talking about over crowding, the company should have improved on its R&D by installing more fibre optics in the area!

It has been long that we have put too much of our energy and hope into ADSL. While I am not saing that the technology should be wiped off across the country, TM should increase its capacity to allow more peopel to be able to download and upload at the published rate which they are paying for.

For the moment, it seems that all complaints to TM have fallen into deaf ears. I don't think there is much sense in filing a complain anymore. Will it be useful if you do so? I doubt it. It is sad to see that the average broadband speed in Malaysia is around 1Mbps when UK is offering around 8Mbps for ADSL 2 which uses telephone wires to connect your pc/laptops to the internet. Realistically, a person who is paying for 1Mbps download speed in Malaysia would only receive around 500kbps in many areas. This is a call for better regulated broadband in Malaysia. What is MCMC doing over there then?

If I am not mistaken, TM have recently bought over Jaring. Jaring used to be a better Internet Service Provider but TM is not using their purchasing power to the maximum! They should combine both companies' resources and together they could improve on the country' broadband infrastructure by increasing the capacity of data passing through their telephone wires. I have to comment that mobile broadband in Malaysia is even worst. It will be much better to rely on TM for the moment.

As far as I can see from a person's stand point, Malaysia will not be able to progress if TM and Jaring are not going to do solve the existing problems being felt by the public. Perhaps the MCMC should initiate their powers in holding that both TM and Jaring are too large and they are abusing their powers. In doing so, both TM and Jaring should split and you will find more people will jump ship and move over to Jaring from TM.

At this moment in time, I think Time.com is doing a fantastic job by offering broadband connections through cables to certain customers in the Klang Valley. I think they should increase their capacility and challenge TM's TMnet instead.

Back in the UK, many people are using Virgin Media. The goodness of using a cable connection is that you would receive a minimum of 10Mbps (downlink) and 512Kbps downlink. In a year or two you will see 50Mbps and 100Mbps downlink which are affordable to the public. At this moment, I am so used to the 10Mbps package that it will be hard for someone like me to using 1Mbps services anymore. It is akin to someone moving backwards instead of moving forward. I am ashamed as Singapore is now offering 8Mbps downlink at the moment while we are still couping with 4Mbps downlink which is quite expensive.

Update: I am writing irrespective of whether the coalition government in Malaysia is trying to stop people from searching for more information. I am writing in terms of the government not being able to supply good broadband to its people!