I think you are also living in your own dream world. You're not referring to a pipe dream, you're referring to an utopia dream world where resources are infinite. Yes, telco advertisements have a lot of lies. I agree with you on that. But to draw a parallel, they are just restaurants that offer 'all-you-can-eat' at a fixed price, and the customer expects the kitchen to have unlimited stock of every ingredient. Who is the fool in that scenario?


I read your blog, I read your Twitter, and read your posts in this forum. You're right about over-subscription, and you're right about a lot of technical things, you're right about telco advertisement lies, but I think you got a typical hypocritical Malaysian mentality. "I pay for buffet so I should be able to eat how much I want". I buy land freehold, so I build your house however tall and however ugly I want? I pay good money to buy an expensive speaker set, so I blast it however loud I want? I can pasang lights outside my house, so I fix glaring stadium lights to shine 24-hours? I'm not in any way condoning the unscrupulous tactics of telcos, but your thinking is similar to the guy I quoted above, which is to be honest, isn't very reasonable.


You mirror what I think, and I agree with your idea on traffic management during daylight/night hours. That's the principle of how a 'smart grid' works anyway, Wikipedia the term if you're interested. Hope YTL does this, but since they say they don't control or throttle their pipes, I don't think they'll have this.

You also have the right idea I feel. It's comforting to know not all Malaysians have a gutter mentality. Go work around South East Asia, the people in those countries always say: "Malaysia never fight for anything, no wars. That's why they expect everything to come easily without effort." I feel so hurt when the Vietnamese (French, USA), Indonesians (Dutch), Cambodia (Pol Pot), Myanmar (civil war), Philippines (Dutch, USA) etc say this, because it is true. We Malaysians always so damn greedy with our utopia thinking and complain we don't have enough, when we actually have so much more than others.


You got the analogy wrong here. You didn't buy a Ferrari (enterprise gigabit fibre channel DWDM), you bought a Honda Kap (consumer broadband). You're expecting a Honda Kap to go at the speed and performance of a Ferrari. The result is obvious.

Oh and by the way, the 'Enterprise SDSL' you mentioned isn't enterprise grade at all, it's a crappy consumer-grade best effort line, that's why it's so cheap. For an equivalent vehicle maybe I'd say SDSL is like a Proton Wira?


I think this YTL fellows have been in the electricity business for long enough. Simple economics dictates that you pay for what you use, and Internet has become a commodity service like water/electricity. Want to use more water, pay for it. Same with electricity, same for Internet. I don't see why anyone has any case to complain, and YTL will make more money of the heavy users so these guys (or girls) pay for the infrastructure they use. I think it's fair when they say they got no cap or throttling, why would they want to do that? You use more, you pay more, they make more, it'd be stupid to throttle your own revenue stream isn't it?

The throttling method doesn't make sense either. Why would I want to degrade a customer's experience? Why not let the customer self-moderate themselves with pay-per-use? I just have to guarantee that the extra you pay me goes into scaling up the experience to what you're paying for (in terms of infrastructure cost). Sounds reasonable to me.
Check out Verizon's iPad+mifi advertisement. Having a bandwidth intensive device means you would want to have a pipe to a high bandwidth network, right? Just because your iPhone comes with a data plan from Maxis/Digi means you treat Yes as 'another plan'? Why not buy a iPhone+mifi and use YTL's network to make call via wifi? Plus now I can use Facetime, which I can't with Maxis/Digi crappy 3G? Sounds good in theory...

A lot of testosterone-filled posts, boys. No intention to start a flame war, but some comments base their principles on childish thinking. I'm more worried about coverage and the per MB price, if those 2 are ok it makes sense to go for their pay-per-use, high-speed mobile internet.

This post has been edited by Forum-Modding Newb: Nov 11 2010, 11:32 PM

Fair play to you sir, a level headed discussion it is.

I don't think it is a good start... I read the owner's interviews and he sounds like he's promising the world. Big picture guys are great, but from my experience some of these big picture guys don't put enough weight into the little details. Like they say, if you can't do the little things well, how can I trust you with the big things?


Hmm didn't think of that. If this Yes Life thing is what they say it is, I should be able to use my iPod as a full-fledged phone isn't it? Yes Life = calls via PC ala Skype = Skype has an iOS app = Yes Life also has an iOS app? Wow. iPod + Huddle = 4G phone. Heck, iPad + Huddle = 4G phone!

That would be sad. Skype calls, which are VoIP, are 60 min = 25.98MB which by your definition of 2.2sen/MB means a 1 minute VoIP call should = 0.9526 sen/minute!!! If they can pull this off the telcos are dead meat. Ok maybe they have to pay for interconnect fees to the Digis/Maxis/Celcoms of the world, add a few sen to that, you could get a price of less than 3-4 sen/minute theoretically, right?

How about SMS? An SMS is 140 bytes, again by your definition of 2.2 sen/MB the price of one SMS in an all-IP environment is..... 0.0003 sen!!! So best case scenario YTL Yes gives us 3-4 sen/minute off-net 1sen/min on-net calls and 3 sen/1000 SMS if they stick to 2.2 sen/MB data....

Nah, it probably won't happen. They'd probably get sued if they offer that kind of ultra-undercut price, but Francis Yeoh did say that "voice-centric business models of the established telcos are not sustainable" (quote from here).

This post has been edited by Forum-Modding Newb: Nov 16 2010, 12:37 AM

I understood your post, that voice and SMS will have a different rate and not be considered data. My post was just imagining if voice/SMS was treated as data instead of something separate.

So guys, what would be a reasonable data price (per MB) you would pay for? If like skint's previous post that the current going rate is an expensive 2.2 sen/MB, I hope Yes can be in the region of 0.1 sen/MB (cheap like electricity pricing), if I can get 1-3Mbps no throttling no caps. 1Mbps true bandwidth would max out at 329GB per month, and be equivalent to a RM336.90 monthly bill! I'd pay for that for sure!!! 0.1sen/MB = around RM1/GB.

Based on what I've seen while poking around their domains, I wouldn't trust YTL with any credit card information. Their website is so ridiculously unsecure. Full of holes everywhere, I won't reveal what I found but any decent hacker will crack this site like a telur separuh masak.

Buying credit online? How do I go online to buy credit when I have zero credit left?

So if there are 4 people using the Mifi or Zoom, everyone's PC gets a pop-up? What if I disable pop-ups? If I am connected via Wifi, how does the device know how to push a pop-up to my browser? Or will all browsing stop and everyone's browser go to a reminder page? What if I don't have any browser but using a non-browser program to use the internet (like internet radio via winamp)? Or is it an SMS to a phone number? What if I don't have a mobile phone? Doesn't sound right.

Ugh. I can imagine, top up RM10, watch HD Youtube for half an hour, receive reminder to top up. Put another RM10, watch another 30 min HD Youtube, pop-up another reminder to top-up.

I wonder how they going to sell their Sezmi IP TV, when a 2 hour 30 min HD movie costs more than RM70-RM90+ in bandwidth cost. And that's not yet including the price you pay for the movie itself. Ouch.

Quoting what I said on Thursday. Looks like I was right.


I doubt it. More like their IT team is weak.

Ping also dont reach the server. RIP, Yes.

This Joshua fella doesn't know what he's talking about. LTE is 4G?

And WiMAX is not?

Well, after some hesitancy, I decided to sign up for Yes. A few things I've realised:

Yes plan is something really different.
After talking to their sales staff, and watching their new videos on Youtube, it really is different from other telco plans. I've had years paying for Streamyx, mobile data, and voice for my phone. What I didn't realise is if I didn't use up to the maximum, I burn a lot of money. Paying RM66+68+50-70 bucks for Streamyx + Digi Discovery + phone calls per month, when I obviously don't use GBs of data.... and I can't transfer money from 1 plan to another (if I don't use Digi Discovery 3GB, I can't use that money for voice/streamyx right?).

The RM30 min usage (not min top-up like some mistaken people are saying) kinds sucks if I go overseas for a week or two (for my work), but I think once I get a Yes phone my total bill per month will go down by a lot. I'll see when the HTC phone comes out and I shift to Yes, if that's true or not, but calculation now is I'll save.

The network is really fast.
YTL really started my interest in mobile wireless, I read up a lot. Like people say LTE in Sweden is 59.1Mbps fast (link here), but I realised they have 40Mhz of spectrum so obviously they can go fast (in Malaysia only 20Mhz is allocated). Wireless speed depends on how much air your company owns to transmit signals, so my initial experience of 5-10Mbps (based on location) is pretty much as close to the best it can be, which is impressive.

At first I followed the other people and thought "ok, lets wait for 6 months then we'll see". But then I read all the technical stuff (like this here) and realised that we've been served with bad 3G and Streamyx for too long that we don't know what's good anymore. P1 has officially said that their average usage is 10GB/month (link here) so I guess WiMAX really can handle that kind of capacity.

They're really trying.
I remember the time when I just stopped complaining. It was after I moved to where I'm staying now and Streamyx became so bad I just stopped using it. When I got 3G, ok fine I can use the internet but it's slow, I didn't even bother complaining. This is one of the few telcos in Malaysia I've seen who looks like they're genuinely worried about how their service is perceived. Sure, their website isn't fully functioning and they're getting a lot of complaints, but I think only P1 and Digi have opened up the channels to let people shoot them.

This Yes Life thing is the killer app.
At first I didn't know what this Yes Life thing is about. After hearing the explanation and listening to the new Youtube about it I finally realised: this is the killer app. No more IDD. Wow. The fact that I can call and receive calls when I am overseas working at local rates is enough reason to subscribe. Right now it's just via PCs, but when their Andriod phone comes out Yes Life will definitely be on it. And their partnership with Apple so far tells me an Apple app isn't that far away either. I'm thinking of getting their HTC phone, since their CEO confirmed that it will have WiMAX + Wifi + SIM, it becomes the best roaming device. As long as I have Wifi, I'm in Malaysia.

So far, I think YTL got good long term prospects if they keep improving. I can only see their 9 sen plan go downwards, one day maybe to 9 sen/9MB-3 min-9 sms? They have to go down that route when the TV thing comes in next year, as HD TV is a few GB per movie. And then those who are on their plan will say goodbye to other telcos.

I've got a Huddle, it's been good so far. Just wanted to add my 10 cents worth.

Not saying what YTL's advertising says is true, but I think Malaysians like to jump the gun and make a lot of comments about things without facts to back it up. Was just reading the news, found this: Verizon's price for their 5-12Mbps up 2-5Mbps down LTE network (I'm just waiting for those idiots who called LTE 4G to now say 12Mbps isn't 4G) is US$50 per 5GB. YTL's 5GB is cheaper at RM105, at around the same speeds, plus it has voice in the same plan which Verizon doesn't have.

I remember so many people complaining about RM30 per GB, but it looks like the price isn't that far off? And I'll just wait for the posts saying that Verizon's LTE isn't 4G?

From what I understand from my techie friend, we'll never get 100Mbps over the air in Malaysia for the next 5 years at least. When the government releases LTE spectrum in 2013, it'll take around 2 years to build the LTE network, and for a telco to overhaul its existing 3G backend to go full IP-based 4G (like what YTL did) its like a 4-5 year project. By then it depends whether YTL gets enough ROI from their current network to compete and switch to WiMAX2 (or migrate to LTE) or not. So, plus another few years. Well, that's his guess anyway.

I'm betting both of you don't use 3G on your phone, since there is no 'firewall' on your phone. Can I also assume you never use public Wifi like Starbucks? Sigh, you probably don't realize that your phone is telling the whole world where you are right now, and that SMS is also unencrypted and can be sniffed with a RM50 antenna box.

Malaysia has a lot of idiots.

Wow, you posted again. Do you carry around a hardware firewall to connect to your laptop or smartphone wherever you go? I also assume you never read that phones also can get infected by trojans and be taken over. Google to remove your ignorance, dear.

Yes, I am in a bad mood today.

Monthly woman problem.

This 'security expert' continue to open his mouth. Let me ask you one thing, Mr tanhks. You said you run Windows. As a Guest or as Administrator? Don't need to cut and paste a lot of things from Wikipedia if you don't know fundamentals of security, and blame a dongle (of all things) for your security issues. Like I said before, go read more. Google helps.

There was a Yes network outage yesterday morning, was a bit frustrated but after lunch it was ok. No announcements of downtime from their Twitter page, not good.

Something interesting a friend passed to me, info from MCMC. And people complaining about 700Mhz awarded to YTL, when the other telco sitting on so much more spectrum. I wonder why Maxis/Digi/Celcom have so much spectrum but their mobile broadband still so slow. Is it a 3G vs 4G thing?


And link to WiMAX forum presentations (where this info comes from): http://www.beaconevents.com/2010/WiMaxForu...atmm/index.html

Interesting to read P1's presentation. Highest user download per month is 548GB! Pirated VCD seller?

I just read the Streamyx thread where the CEO talked about throttling, capping, FUP, etc. and the associated blog post here. Now I'm feeling pretty good about the utility model, as long as the video pirates stay away from YTL's service I won't have to suffer like all the other 'average users' on unlimited plan services.

Someone asked.

I was just mooching around the Yes website. It seems they changed their content, and added some new info. Much better info than before, I think. And I was looking at their IDD rates.... all I can say is WOW.

To Singapore: 9 sen/min for both mobile and fixed

to compare with Digi which I am using now... 18 sen for fixed, 43 sen for mobile.

To UK: 9 sen/min for fixed, 72 sen for mobile

to compare with Digi again, 18 sen fixed, 93 sen mobile.

USA: 9 sen for fixed....
Canada: 9 sen for fixed and mobile
China: 9 sen for both
Hong Kong: 9 sen
Germany: 9 sen

Wow. Seriously. I'm going to try calling a cousin in Singapore tomorrow, this is seriously wow.

Wow! I didn't know that! This Pennytel thing sounds very interesting. Is the RM15 per month a service charge, or minimum usage like Yes?

The free for all buffet style internet service is unsustainable. Eventually, we'll see all telcos shift to some form of PAYU model in the future, just like how electricty and water are being billed now. Both electric and water are finite resources, so is bandwidth.

If Yes can move all the low/mid users (which probably constitute 70-80% of the current broadband customer base) to their network then I think two things happen.

1. YTL gets to leverage on economy of scale. Low/mid users will watch their rates go down.
2. Bandwidth hoggers get more bandwidth to hog (more speed for the downloaders yay!), but less low/mid users to subsidize their hogging. They'll watch their rates go up.

Guess who benefits from that?

This post has been edited by Forum-Modding Newb: Dec 19 2010, 03:24 AM

One fellow I talked with said this to me when we were discussing Yes: You take 1 hour to download a movie on Yes, but take 2 days to download on other telco. So you get it 47 hours earlier. Now lets say if someone ask you to refund back your 47 hours of your life how much would you charge them? I think this way of thinking makes sense.....

The calling on Yeslife sometimes it is hit or miss. I've managed to call via Streamyx, but sometimes it's puzzlingly down. Maybe they are still tweaking the Yes Life backend. Who knows, their support is notoriously silent. I suspect there was a network outage 2 days ago also, couldn't connect, but no news about it so I'll never know for sure. Their twitter feed should tell us these things instead of talk nonsense about cats and have fights with bloggers.

You're right. That's why you can't compare a RM88/month landline with a mobile wireless broadband line like Yes. Unifi's VIP5 which is at RM149/month with a 2 year commitment which adds up to RM3,576 + RM200 installation, and had an initial download cap of 60GB/month. So RM3,776 is the entry TCO (total cost of ownership) of the VIP5 line.

Compare that with a much lower entry level of Yes due to no contract, with a different usage pattern because it is mobile (when you come out of the house you're supposed to be doing something, not downloading large files like a madman/woman). Sure, RM3,776 will get you only around 177GB on Yes but you then have to cost in the premium of

1. mobility
2. no contract
3. the ability to login using one account on multiple devices at multiple locations (1 Yes ID can login to 3 Huddles concurrently)

how much of a premium would you pay for the 3 features above? Additional 20%? 30%? It's even more dude, when you consider a fixed line call is approximately 4 sen/min and a mobile line call is around 12 sen, that's a x3 premium right there just for mobility!

Simple example, you compare personal loan with credit card. Personal loan can give you larger loan amount, lower interest, etc. because they know for the next 20 years you're stuck with them. Credit card limit is low, interest is crazy high, but it's a lot easier entry level and you can potong the card anytime. Same thing, Unifi is like personal/housing loan, Yes is like credit card in theory. Different usage totally, you don't hear people say "damn I don't get a credit card because personal loan give me more money with lower interest!", isn't it?

And by the way, 4GB on Yes is RM82 only not RM120. I think that's one of the weaknesses of YTL's pricing structure, and specifically the cube. People look at it and make a mental calculation: download 10GB = RM300! When it's only RM210, which is a big difference imho. I don't like the concept of the cube at all, I foresee when they want to come up with new packages they will need to design a new cube, because the cube only got 2 sidefaces, which severely limits innovative pricing plans. No point putting their blue cube there but then all the important info like new promotion or additional rebate is a block of text which doesn't appear in the adverts.

The cube doesn't show the rebate portion which is very important.