This fine evening, a TM technician called me, and the conversation took over 30 minutes. He was basically trying to help me with the slow connection (or should I say capped connection), and he was very kind too and have the technical background too.
In summary, these are the key understandings that I still remember (not in order ya, coz I just wrote whatever came across in my mind, just got back from watching movie too, so started to forget some of the details):
a. YES and YES, TM has enforced the capped under the Fair Usage Policy. And he said he could not anything as it was coming from higher level - and the reason that was believed to allow TM to do so is because we have signed the form and there was FUP policy
b. It seems that the international bandwidth has been used up to the CRITICAL level, and prompted them to make this swift move.
c. This move is believed to be a 'strategic' move so that existing Streamyx users will migrate to Unifi (where the quota is real and stated upfront) unlike Streamyx which does not impose any quota.
d. Apparently, there is automated system where it monitors the bandwidth used on daily basis and enforce the speed cap across the user base, whenever the bandwidth is saturated. Unfortunately, this system does not monitor INDIVIDUAL usage, but rather as a whole. So, it does not mean that if you don't clog the bandwidth you are safe.
e. He believes that this cap is temporary while waiting for the Unifi subscriber's base to increase.
f. The cap is enforced based on the package (meaning to say 4mbps should be getting higher capped international speed thatn 1.5 mbps)
g. It seems that TM won't go public with this speed cap to take care of their reputation. (Remember when Unifi was launched with quota, the whole nation was condemning them, and later they retracted the quota 'temporarily')
h. The growing number of 'big-buffet-eater' (read: Unifi users) has something to do with 'running-out-of'bandwidth' effect that all of use are currently facing.
i. The word "Unlimited" in Streamyx ads refer to the access and not the bandwidth.
What I did:
a. I asked him to escalate to higher management to let the public knows about this cap.
b. I told him many were flaming and bashing TM, especially nowadays after the sudden speed cap.
c. The FUP should be more transparent rather than GENERIC FUP i.e. Unifi, Maxis BB, Digi BB clearly states their monthly quota.
That's all. I will add more if I managed to recall some of it.
Hope this helps.
They sell high speed service like unifi, and now they say they are running out of bandwidth.
Whats more disturbing is a hard cap like this actually mean their bandwidth will be under-utilize, there will be extra bandwidth that no one can use because everyone is capped. This is not to solve their bandwidth issue, its just to save the money they spend on international bandwidth