Broadband
I HATE broadband providers.
Like, all of a sudden, the network chooses to go gila on me. Now the speed is 1/10th of the speed I used to get, and even then the line keeps dropping.
And for the amount I'm paying, I'm not happy.
I still remember being part of the TMNet Streamyx pool of customers who were constantly in the dark whenever some network outage occurred. I remember venting my frustration to customer care that put me perpetually on hold and even then when someone DID answer it they had no fucking clue what you were asking them so they put you on hold AGAIN. The stupid service cost us fucking RM88 for a 1.0Mbps line, which by today's standards is truly and utterly THIRD WORLD, and you'd be lucky if it didn't crash at least once a month.
Not that people weren't using their bloody BitTorrent and Limewire to fuck up the network to begin with, but that’s beside the point. Why do we have such slow speeds and lines that keep disconnecting???
Even our own MP Datuk Seri Dr. Chua Soi Lek is annoyed with the quality of telecommunications in Malaysia. In a statement issued by our Health Minister, he said that 'Malaysian telephone lines need to be upgraded. It’s the truth. It’s so difficult to get a clear line'. This after our poor Health Minister had a fucked up video conference (of course, fortunately just a ‘trial’ one, nothing ‘official’) with Terengganu’s state health director. You can read about the article here.
Hey hey but modems come bundled FREE with Streamyx packages. Goodies.
WE DESERVE CHEAP AND RELIABLE BROADBAND!
Here in Australia everybody's pointing a finger at everybody, over who should be responsible for the Third World service that they have here. Not only are the plans massively expensive they are also unreliable (like now, when the line’s crashed and everybody’s blaming Telstra because they own all the lines and there’s nothing anybody can do about it).
Telstra is the main culprit (otherwise known as ‘shitface’) in this whole debate in Australia because of their reluctance to open the broadband network to rival ISP’s at a low cost. Since they own all the infrastructure they get to be the BigBrother of broadband and charge ridiculous fees to any ISP who needs to use their line to offer broadband.
ISP’s go one step further to CAP your monthly download, so when you exceed that cap you automatically get throttled down to 64kbps (dialup speed!!!!!!!!) for the remainder of the month before the cap is reset the following month. In other words, GUILT when using YouTube, GUILT when downloading 2GB porn, GUILT when viewing high resolution pictures of a guy’s chest, GUILT when letting BitTorrent run while you’re at uni having a good time.
Fucking GUILT.
Even then, Telstra’s own Telstra Bigpond broadband service (access the site here) is a joke. If the massive monthly fees didn't kill you (20GB monthly download cap at 8Mbps is worth AU$89.95... you do the math), then the price of buying the modem, installation cost, connection fees (yes, Telstra charges you to self-install your own modem for the price of AU$249 for a wireless router installation – remember the key word here is SELF INSTALLATION!) and other miscellaneous fees will certainly burn a hole in your pocket.
Now I’m not usually a fan of Singapore but I gotta say hey these people have real broadband going. Singapore’s SingTel has 10mbps broadband for only S$68/month, unlimited downloads, free modem. I hear the reliability is not too bad either and of course you’d expect Singaporean companies to have excellent customer service as they always do in their plastic society. Bloody idiots.
Don’t even START with Japan. Bloody Japanese. Because their users are less interested in downloading content from the USA or elsewhere overseas (since most Japanese only read Japanese language and websites are hosted on Japanese servers) so they do not need to pay large amounts for the interconnecting fees to USA based providers, unlike in Australia who is increasingly becoming the United States of the East. This means lower cost for broadband. High population density, large number of users (around 20 million people are connected to broadband) and good infrastructure further drives costs down. Broadband packs from takeaways? Sure. People even give free trials away on the streets!!! Advertisements in subway stations, your local Sushi store... you name it. Broadband is big business.
They have fiber lines of up to 100Mbps starting at about ¥4,500 a month. Although the downside is that this service is limited to larger condos in major cities, it is still VERY affordable. Normal ADSL starts at around ¥3000 a month. Read about their fiber optic lines here or here.
So coming back to the whole issue about broadband availability. 10 years ago it was a luxury to have internet connection slower than 512kbps. Now anything below 2Mbps is a joke.
Webpages are getting more and more pretty (meaning more and more stuff to download so that you can view them), files are getting larger and larger (think HD Porno), things to read online are becoming more and more plentiful; I don't think I'll be able to survive without the internet in any given day because it has become as important to me as going to have a poop every morning. I mean seriously, it's IMPORTANT damnit
SO why shouldn't we, consumers, be ENTITLED to cheap always on fast broadband that does not crash and has good customer service? We are, after all, bloody paying for it.
Bring on the fast broadband, it'll give me orgasms at 10Mbps.
Like, all of a sudden, the network chooses to go gila on me. Now the speed is 1/10th of the speed I used to get, and even then the line keeps dropping.
And for the amount I'm paying, I'm not happy.
I still remember being part of the TMNet Streamyx pool of customers who were constantly in the dark whenever some network outage occurred. I remember venting my frustration to customer care that put me perpetually on hold and even then when someone DID answer it they had no fucking clue what you were asking them so they put you on hold AGAIN. The stupid service cost us fucking RM88 for a 1.0Mbps line, which by today's standards is truly and utterly THIRD WORLD, and you'd be lucky if it didn't crash at least once a month.
Not that people weren't using their bloody BitTorrent and Limewire to fuck up the network to begin with, but that’s beside the point. Why do we have such slow speeds and lines that keep disconnecting???
Even our own MP Datuk Seri Dr. Chua Soi Lek is annoyed with the quality of telecommunications in Malaysia. In a statement issued by our Health Minister, he said that 'Malaysian telephone lines need to be upgraded. It’s the truth. It’s so difficult to get a clear line'. This after our poor Health Minister had a fucked up video conference (of course, fortunately just a ‘trial’ one, nothing ‘official’) with Terengganu’s state health director. You can read about the article here.
Hey hey but modems come bundled FREE with Streamyx packages. Goodies.
WE DESERVE CHEAP AND RELIABLE BROADBAND!
Here in Australia everybody's pointing a finger at everybody, over who should be responsible for the Third World service that they have here. Not only are the plans massively expensive they are also unreliable (like now, when the line’s crashed and everybody’s blaming Telstra because they own all the lines and there’s nothing anybody can do about it).
Telstra is the main culprit (otherwise known as ‘shitface’) in this whole debate in Australia because of their reluctance to open the broadband network to rival ISP’s at a low cost. Since they own all the infrastructure they get to be the BigBrother of broadband and charge ridiculous fees to any ISP who needs to use their line to offer broadband.
ISP’s go one step further to CAP your monthly download, so when you exceed that cap you automatically get throttled down to 64kbps (dialup speed!!!!!!!!) for the remainder of the month before the cap is reset the following month. In other words, GUILT when using YouTube, GUILT when downloading 2GB porn, GUILT when viewing high resolution pictures of a guy’s chest, GUILT when letting BitTorrent run while you’re at uni having a good time.
Fucking GUILT.
Even then, Telstra’s own Telstra Bigpond broadband service (access the site here) is a joke. If the massive monthly fees didn't kill you (20GB monthly download cap at 8Mbps is worth AU$89.95... you do the math), then the price of buying the modem, installation cost, connection fees (yes, Telstra charges you to self-install your own modem for the price of AU$249 for a wireless router installation – remember the key word here is SELF INSTALLATION!) and other miscellaneous fees will certainly burn a hole in your pocket.
Now I’m not usually a fan of Singapore but I gotta say hey these people have real broadband going. Singapore’s SingTel has 10mbps broadband for only S$68/month, unlimited downloads, free modem. I hear the reliability is not too bad either and of course you’d expect Singaporean companies to have excellent customer service as they always do in their plastic society. Bloody idiots.
Don’t even START with Japan. Bloody Japanese. Because their users are less interested in downloading content from the USA or elsewhere overseas (since most Japanese only read Japanese language and websites are hosted on Japanese servers) so they do not need to pay large amounts for the interconnecting fees to USA based providers, unlike in Australia who is increasingly becoming the United States of the East. This means lower cost for broadband. High population density, large number of users (around 20 million people are connected to broadband) and good infrastructure further drives costs down. Broadband packs from takeaways? Sure. People even give free trials away on the streets!!! Advertisements in subway stations, your local Sushi store... you name it. Broadband is big business.
They have fiber lines of up to 100Mbps starting at about ¥4,500 a month. Although the downside is that this service is limited to larger condos in major cities, it is still VERY affordable. Normal ADSL starts at around ¥3000 a month. Read about their fiber optic lines here or here.
So coming back to the whole issue about broadband availability. 10 years ago it was a luxury to have internet connection slower than 512kbps. Now anything below 2Mbps is a joke.
Webpages are getting more and more pretty (meaning more and more stuff to download so that you can view them), files are getting larger and larger (think HD Porno), things to read online are becoming more and more plentiful; I don't think I'll be able to survive without the internet in any given day because it has become as important to me as going to have a poop every morning. I mean seriously, it's IMPORTANT damnit
SO why shouldn't we, consumers, be ENTITLED to cheap always on fast broadband that does not crash and has good customer service? We are, after all, bloody paying for it.
Bring on the fast broadband, it'll give me orgasms at 10Mbps.
Labels: rant
Fell from the sky at 7:27 PM
3 Comments:
"SO why shouldn't we, consumers, be ENTITLED to cheap always on fast broadband that does not crash and has good customer service? We are, after all, bloody paying for it."
OK: our entitlement is because we are paying for something cheap? That sounds a bit contradictory to me.
So maybe it is a contradiction, maybe it's not.
Who cares?
It’s just a post. It's not meant to reflect a coherently constructed journal article worthy of a PhD. They do not need to cater for anyone’s needs nor be morally (or grammatically) correct just so that it is pleasing to your eyes.
HOWEVER on the flip side of the coin, YOU seem to care a lot (even taking things personally as it has been revealed in previous comments of yours), especially so if it puts you on moral high ground.
I notice how you love to deconstruct my posts and pick out the minutest details just so you can hurl your disagreements back at me and elevate your status to ‘the-person-in-the-right’. Perhaps you like the attention, or just like having your way and being right all the time, but if you care so much about the ‘correctness’ of what someone has to say then may I suggest you look somewhere else. Like maybe, the Herald Sun’s blog. Or the Vatican.
There’s heaps of work to be done in those areas. Go on, knock yourself out.
I must just like provoking you. Or maybe I was bored. I only pick on little things, cos on the bigger things what's the point? Anyway, I enjoy reading your blog. I particularly liked the post about how you met Dr Mahathir as an equal when he interviewed you for your scholarship.
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