If this Altel also comes out with stingy volume quota, all hope is lost for LTE industry in Malaysia.

It's cheating to sell volume quota packages and throttle users speed to dialup like speeds.

DiGi's doing that. Pay RM3 for a daily 150mb quota plan yet they still throttle you to 384kbps speed.

BS and did you know that the slower your line is, you actually consume more volume in the end because Malaysian telcos count towards both upload + download traffic?

Why that's because if you prolong your download for a file of the same size say 100mb using a 50mbps LTE vs a 384kbps HSDPA line, the latter will end up using up more quota than the earlier because it has to keep sending "keep alive" + feedback information via uploads to the server over a longer period of time in addition to the download file size you download?

In the end by slowing down lines while charging so expensive for so little volume quota, they are cheating consumers even more.

I got Celcom two minority package (SKMM + 1Malaysia) and we know these two are unlimited.
I asked Celcom whether prepaid users could change sim to LTE or upgrade the current simcard profile to LTE but their answer was there are no such plans for now.
Imagine the power i would have if I could upgrade it to LTE.

if given the choice between a true unlimited 384kbps and a 100Mbps LTE with quota i would prefer the first one. 5GB quota is just not enough these days, almost all sites are flash-heavy and browsing for one hour can easily cost u 100++ MB. Giving 5GB quota is just ridiculous. 30GB should be the bare minimum.

Not my view, but just the fact & history of "unlimited quota"

Years ago there was unlimited quota by these telcos...
However there was small percentage of users who really used it to the max, and this small percentage of uses significantly affected other users' experience as well as network performance...
Hence these telcos have learned this lessons and stopped these unlimited quota..
Which is why you hardly see "unlimited quota" not only in Malaysia, but anywhere in the world.. (i know still got few here with unlimited quota)
Agree current LTE quota is too little, and unlimited quota would be ideal for consumers, but it's just not practical for the telcos..

Cost per GB for LTE is significantly lower than 3G. And yes these telcos should add more volumes...

This post has been edited by alf233: Aug 5 2013, 08:46 AM

Very rational point of view alf233. I agree that the best move is to give more quota to users. However, i do understand the reason for quotas.

Cost per GB is cheaper than those days I completely agree.

On contrary to that, it seems our present day mobile internet charges has gotten even more expensive compared to years back.

Years back mobile backhauls and connectivity was limited and today we already have most our our base stations wired up with redundant fibre links which feed them with gigabits of data.

Even so the irony was that years back we had truly UNLIMITED access at full 7.2mbps for RM99 and those with quota are slowed down to even faster speeds than today - 384kbps after finishing what they subscribed.

Today Malaysian general quota exceed speed across all telcos is 64kbps/128kbps! Why are we moving backwards? Is bandwidth getting more expensive? I don't think so.

Why are we not getting something like 512kbsp-1mbps after we exceeded our quotas since LTE networks today do speeds of over 30mbps on most plans while base stations already are accommodating hundreds or gigabits of data on their backhaul links?

Our mobile telcos are still selling 384kbps mobile internet plans, and those who have used it would know how excruciating it is. Even Youtube videos on 144p wouldn't stream smoothly and you need to pay RM3 just for 150mb?
That's horrendous!

At the end, it's all about the money and revenues. Our telcos still think they can have it all their way even though they continue to make Malaysian subscribers as theit milk cows.

Just came back from Maxis press conf , earnings up 13.8% to 528million YoY.

Still believe the lies that subscribers are hogging their lines with a small percentage hogging over 80% of their capacity? If that is so how come every year their profits keep going up and up?

International capacity limited? How come fixed lines get away with UNLIMITED bandwidth while wireless who shares the same international submarine connectivity with them doesn't?

Will have to agree with you on this.. Unacceptable isn't, when we live in 4G era, which can give you average speed of 20Mbps & peak 50Mbps, but the speed after exceeding quota is throttled down to 384kbps. Thats less than 1% of 50Mbps.. The message they want to give is simple I think.. "If you exceed your quota, your internet will be almost useless.. so buy a new volume"

On the internet traffic.. Being in the industry and having looked at the actual stats, it is actually true that the top users actually make up most of the overall network capacity... Moving from pay-per-use to volume based charging, the profits is mainly from those who don't use all their quotas.. Honestly, there are still lots of users who use not even more than 50% of their quotas.. Smart marketing by them.. Example, I myself subscribed to 3GB/month for a 3G mobile device, but my average usage is only 2GB/month (because I want to have a peace of mind not having to go through super slow internet and top up my quota every month)... So from me, the telco is already making 1GB worth of profit out of nothing.. And imagine how much they are making these free profits at no cost from their millions of subs.. not only from unused data, but also from unused voice & text

This post has been edited by alf233: Aug 7 2013, 08:42 AM

+++++++++1!

A lot of telco just waste so much money in their internal dept with so called development or research which after so many years bring no good result or wrongly plan in investment. End up the extra cost need to pass out to consumer. Just my 2 cent.

puncak semangat hahahahaha
memang semangat to beg the government to give 30mHz to them xD

You can keep your 2 cent.
Tell this to DoCoDo and you can keep using your GPRS to suft wap instead of net.

R&D is one of the most important divisions in an organization, the company I'm working in is a telco vendor spends a lot on R&D because that's how you remain competitive in the market.
Your customer wants to see what you can offer that others can't.

what telco vendor r u working with? interested to apply for a position

any news from digi when smartphone will get LTE ?

For vendor, yes R&D is very important. But for telco vostro78 is right. It is not very important, but still have the importance.. for example researching and testing new technologies (e.g. LTE/LTE-Advanced), market trend, devices/usage trend, spectrum trend, etc... developing and applying them to the network where/when applicable, to enhance user experience & reduce Capex/Opex. For example, it didn't take days or weeks to deploy 4G/LTE, it tooks months/years before the telcos feel comfortable to launch it as commercial service to paying-customers

I think Digi is not so soon,

so its worth while to MNP to maxis ?
Already considering this time as got LTE capable device.

well we all know that soon or later all ISP will have LTE/LTE-A,..

just the matter of time,. if ur area is good coverages in Maxis/celcom LTE , u can consider MNP,..

or u can patiencely wait for Digi to launch LTE

This post has been edited by chuahcs79: Aug 12 2013, 06:46 PM

Maxis: launched Jan 2013, smartphones April 2013 [3 months]
Celcom: launched April 2013, smartphones June 2013 [2 months]
Digi: launched July 2013, smartphones XXXX 2013

Looking at the trend, it takes around 2-3 months for telco to offer smartphones after their LTE launch.
So most likely Digi will have it in Sept or Oct this year. But this is just my guess, i may be completely wrong..

Technically CSFB is required. This is a matured features that has been implemented in almost all LTE network worldwide, and supported by all LTE phones. It is just the matter of tweaking the parameters in the network and working with phones manufacturers to fit their network settings.. Again, my guess it will happen soon...

If i were you I will wait, unless if my LTE phone is iPhone5, then I will port because Digi's LTE doesn't support 1.8GHz

Your view where if it doesn't directly affect the end user, it does not mean it's a waste of money. The market will dictate at what price the Operator can sell your the service. If one Operator has a high cost base, it only means that the margins will be lower compared to it's competitor.

Generally there are a few different technical teams in Operator:

R&D
Not all Operator has this team; Operator that have R&D team would be major players (NTTDocomo, Vodafone, China Mobile, etc).

This team will heavily participate in standardization (3GPP, NGNM, FTTH Forum, IEEE, etc) to ensure that the ecosystem is growing according to the needs of the Operator and it's end user.

Examples:
SON (Self Organizing Networks) where it helps in deployment and optimization of the network.
LTE Carrier Aggregation pairings

Strategy
This team decides the 5-10 year strategy of the company; which includes spectrum strategy, network architecture, product offering, etc.

Proof-of-Concept or Trial will be generally done by this team.

Engineering
This team designs the actual deployment; how many sites, where are they, etc etc.

Operations
Manages the network; including bug fix, outages and etc



My view is R&D team is important to drive the whole ecosystem but it's not crucial in every operator.