We’ll get straight to the point. /K/ Army is extremely dissatisfied with how backward some of the internet service providers are. The frequent disconnections and terrible international speeds have made ISP (Internet service provider) in Malaysia a laughing stock of other countries. The problem is that especially with some ISPs, the quality of the internet connection is dependent on the amount of users located in the area.

ISPs are now still aggressively advertising and attempting to attract more customers when nothing is done to upgrade their infrastructure to cope with the influx of new users, which causes degradation to the existing users’ quality of the internet connection2 even more. In an attempt from the ISPs to delay the need to upgrade the infrastructure, a “fair usage” policy is implemented citing the reason of “80 percent of the bandwidth is being swallowed by only 20 percent of the users”.

Also, they attempt to demonstrate the “speed and the quality” of their services by conducting Speed Tests1 (if they do at all) to local servers. The thing is, almost 90% of websites surfed and places we legally download from are international websites, which leads to complaints as to why the internet is slow. Achieving an approximate 1Mbps4 for a Speed Test to Kuala Lumpur is no great achievement at all, since it is basically intra-connection3.

Try playing games on international servers for example, and you’ll almost immediately get booted from the game lobby with screams from other international users to “stop using dial up you idiot”. Dial up you say? But my package is 1mbps? But it gets even worse, for some of the users, local connections do not even reach supposed speeds of 1mbps. Complaints have been made for months, and this issue has been known for years, with no exaggeration, and the sorry state of affairs that plague Malaysia’s internet connection has yet to be properly addressed.

Among the reasons given by TM employees when complaints are made are as cited;
1) You signed the contract, and have to abide by its terms and conditions. (does that mean one can be negligent and stop offering good services?)
2) It’s too bad that you have so many users in your area. (everyone in my area is suffering due to your misleading information in your aggressive advertising)

1. Speed Test - a test to measure the “quality of the Internet connection”
2. Quality of Internet connection – determined by download speed, uploads speed and latency of the Internet connection
3. Intra-connection – connection from a client in the same network as the server
4. Mbps – Megabits per second

Speed test details were changed to
Member Name: KuzumiTaiga
Test Server Location: United States of America
Subscribed Plan: 1Mbps