I wonder if the D-Link router is a requirement, or if it can be put in a closet in favor of our own equipment. It's not something I would want on my network.

Astro is so incredibly bad (maybe the world's worst pay TV system?) that competing should be easy if they can get programming contracts. This may even drive uptake of HSBB.

No, but it includes a phone line as part of the service. I suppose the difference is relatively academic.

That's not too exciting - I get that with my current Streamyx 4mbps.

... which feels very slow after getting back from Thailand where I was getting 1.5MB/s downloads on ADSL.

This post has been edited by rajulkabir: Mar 13 2010, 07:37 PM

That's not how triple play services work. If your internet rate is 10mbps, then that is what's set aside for internet. It is not affected by phone or TV usage. Those come out of additional line capacity which has not been allocated to internet use.

That's not a very constructive way to look at it.

First comes the technology, then come the applications.

If the technology is not in place, almost nobody will be developing applications for it.

The ways in which IPv6 might benefit you (remote access to all the electrical devices in your home, seamless cost-optimized availability over multiple devices as you travel between home and work, etc.) will all come only AFTER widespread deployment. You have to take the long-term view if you want new things to happen.

Sillyness. Every consumer ISP in the world oversubscribes. 20-to-1, even 100-to-1. It would be a colossal waste of resources to allocate international connectivity equivalent to the full last-mile bandwidth for every user. When you subscribe to 10mbps service, should TM make sure you have a dedicated 10mbps pathway to Japan, another to China, another to Europe, and another to USA? Even if they were the most efficient company in the world, your service would cost about RM50K per month.

Have you tried cloning their router's MAC address?

You are not correct. Maxis and Celcom are wireless, which means slow and unreliable. But it also means they can be used almost anywhere in a broad coverage area without requiring specific infrastructure for each customer.

HSBB is using fibre optic cables, which is basically the same idea as the copper cable used for Streamyx ADSL except they are made of a different material which can carry a higher capacity.

You need to have the cable connected to a router on your premises. Then from the router you can use wifi locallly if you want to.

Is there even one person in Malaysia who has the interest and wherewithal to subscribe to HSBB but does not have a mobile phone?

Anyway, what good does the phone do in case of emergency anyway? Every time I've tried to call 999, 994 etc., they have either not answered or been totally useless.

That's exactly the point. Since it is very unlikely that anybody exists who has HSBB but does not have a mobile phone, I do not think it is that important to worry about the fact that HSBB might not work when the power is out.


Don't expect too much, you may be disappointed. I've rung emergency numbers three times in the past few years - twice for fires, and one when someone broke their arm so badly the bone was sticking out through the skin and he needed an ambulance. In all cases it was a useless waste of time. The fires were resolved by finding some security guards nearby who radioed to their office who sent someone over to the fire station. The broken arm was resolved by driving him to the hospital ourselves, risking further injury because none of us had paramedic training.

Well, that's clearly not true. Even in Thailand they have 16mbps ADSL on copper telephone lines.

From the US, most of the international browsing people do is to Europe. The transatlantic cable capacity is huge and speeds are normally just about the same as local speeds.

When I am in the USA and try to contact Malaysian IP addresses (e.g. LYN) it's usually pretty awful. But only a tiny number of people there are trying to contact Malaysia.

The situation is fundamentally different due to the asymmetry in market size and content placement. I don't think you can usefully compare. It is much more important for Malaysia to upgrade its international links than for the USA to.

California is about 70ms RTT from New York, and there is near-infinite bandwidth.

If someone is seeing dramatically different results between speedtests in those two locations, it's not about the geographical distance. It's about TM's transit arrangements and the quality of routing they have to the particular ISPs hosting the speedtests. TM buys very cheap bandwidth (hence you see cogent in traceroutes all the time) and as a result gets low-quality onward international links.

I have a friend who works there, he explained it to me.

The most popular videos are deployed via a CDN with worldwide POPs, so if you are watching a video that is globally hot right now it will probably stream quickly. Other videos are pushed out to multiple data centres, and some are pushed out only to a few. If the video is one of the millions in the long tail, you may be streaming it straight from California and thus subject to the vagaries and foibles of TM's transpacific link.

I'm not sure about the reaction time for redeployment - if a video suddenly goes viral on Facebook, how long does it take before it gets moved to the CDN?

YouTube does not throttle connections to make video play stop and buffer. That makes no sense.


What are you talking about?

Malaysia is part of it. It connects to Malaysia via Singapore, which is fine, since there is already plenty of capacity across the causeway.

Thanks, too bad more people don't understand this.

The mentality of "I pay for 4mbps therefore I am going to download 4mbps 24/7 just to stick it to the man!!!1!!" is so childish. It's an example of the cultural problems that are holding Malaysia back - a failure to respect the commons and to think of one's actions in the context of greater society.

Great circle distance is not the same as cable distance. The cable across the Pacific to Los Angeles is straight for most of the way. The cables to Europe run around all over the place.

How pathetic (and typical TM). Nothing but a bunch of speeches. Mobile TM Point staff said pricing information still not available, "maybe tomorrow".

And half of Dataran Merdeka is a "VIP" area pandering to the insecurities of a bunch of pissant nobodies who are more concerned with receiving face from a telephone company than with doing their job of providing services to the public.

Shameful.