TM UniFi High Speed Broadband Project International Comparison

Back in September 2008, MCMC awarded the High Speed Broadband Project (HSBB) of the country to none other than TM. Fast forward to March 2010, TM announced and launched their high speed broadband packages. While it was met with instant online news coverage by bloggers, its come under fire by the heavy-users of broadband.

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Note, if you visit the UniFi website, make sure you’ve got the www prefix. They didn’t make it work without it. Phbt.

Okay. So here are the plans being offered for the high speed broadband project by TM.

PackageDownload/Upload speedMonthly DataMonthly Price (RM)
VIP 55Mbps60GB149.00
VIP 1010Mbps90GB199.00
VIP 2020Mbps120GB249.00

Now, let’s have a look at the broadband packages in Singapore. They’re in the midst of developing their high speed broadband, but these standard broadband packages will do.

ISPDownload/Upload speedMonthly DataMonthly Price (SGD)
Singtel10Mbps / 1MbpsUnlimited56.90
Starhub8Mbps / 1.2MbpsUnlimited81.32

I took the packages which comes closest to our high speed broadband packages based on the download/upload rate and monthly price.

Next, we’ve Australia. Who’s deployed their high speed broadband as ADSL2+ packages. Though weirdly when I was looking at their packages, providers are now promoting naked broadband packages. Not sure what’s that about.

ISPDownload/Upload speedMonthly DataMonthly Price (AUD)
Bigpond20Mbps / 1Mbps50GB109.95

Many other Australian ISPs weren’t included because most stated speeds as ADSL2+ rather than the average numbers.

Nonetheless, this is enough information for me to write my point. Are our high speed broadband packages offered by TM fair and equivalent?

I don’t want to look at Malaysia as some 3rd world country. Therefore, I would look at the prices dollar for dollar. Not to mention, you do get what you pay for, especially in Australia.

Personally, if the government really wants to push the national broadband plan, readjust all the broadband plans for crying out loud!

This is what I told my friend in the car when discussing about UniFi and current broadband plans:

The new 5Mbps UniFi plan should be RM88 (though I expected it to be no more than RM100). Then, they should make the 1Mbps packages the minimum speeds for anything below that.

Yes, there are users who don’t use the Internet as much. But, they also don’t want to waste their time waiting for a website to load. Think about it. Faster loads can get things done much faster later. Even the lady at the wet market can answer her email orders more efficiently and get back to chopping heads of fish much quicker.

Broadband internet shouldn’t be a commodity but a necessity by now.

P.S.: Why bundle something your real market knows they’re not interested in? Did the market research go wrong? Or, are you cashing in?

7 thoughts on “TM UniFi High Speed Broadband Project International Comparison”

  1. the cap is the most sickening part.
    although it claim to give you high speed access but tmnet is very well known with its slow access and they have 100 reason readily to tell you when you call up.
    just see if the quality is there at the first place

  2. You should have listened to Afzal Abdul Rahim’s talk at TEDxKL today. (He’s the CEO of TIME dotCom.) He gave some good reasons about why it’s unfair to compare the cost of broadband access for Malaysia with other countries.

    Amongst some of the data he put up:
    – Cost to Malaysian ISP to route packets to International destinations: USD65 / Megabit per second / month
    – Cost to US ISP to route packets: -USD2 / MPS / month (i.e. they get paid USD2 per MPS per month)

    (because on average the US sends so many more packets out)

    Singapore and Hong Kong are hubs to connect to the US, Malaysia is not, which is why it costs more to send from Malaysia via Sg and HK.

    Korea is recognised as having the ‘best’ Internet access in the world, but none of the four major ISPs are profitable at the moment.

    And so on and so forth.

    Anyway, it’s unfair for me to speak on his behalf. If his TEDxKL talk ever gets put up, please check it out.

  3. @ipohchai:
    Indeed, the consistency is a vital part of quality broadband.

    @dzof:
    Wow. It’s really good to know you’re still around. LOL!

    And those facts were just what I was asking Sashi for. Many thanks. And I believe it does shine light on matters regarding our cost.

    But seriously, are the cost a smokescreen on delivering the quality service we’re willing to pay? Or, is someone not paying enough to someone to make sure it’s smooth sailing? Because many will then ask, why is Streamyx like it is now – inconsistent?

  4. Well, I DID put up the uStream video links to his talk on Twitter. :P

    (It’s not very clear, but the sound is decent enough, and you can get what he’s saying.)

    And unlike Dzof, I wasn’t taking notes, so I couldn’t spout the figures offhand, heh.

    But yeah, what Dzof said.

  5. I don’t use Digi’s wireless broadband but their 3G instead. I’m quite pleased with their 3G consistency so far. As to compare a wired line versus wireless, its no doubt wired broadband would be more consistent than wireless. But my debate is, TM should seriously reconsider their prices.

  6. Internet in malaysia is still bad. Except from TM(streamyx and unifi), all of them such as maxis, digi, celcom wireless broadband, are weird. Digi is the worst. They want deposit from foreigners and when u stop using broadband stick, they never give back deposit to users. I have been waiting to get my deposit back. They don’t care their customers especially foreigners. I would like to advise to apply TM if possible. Don’t use others especially digi. Never believe DIGI is the fastest and best.

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