Of Streamyx and Celcom Broadband and P1 Wimax

I am a user of TM’s renowned Streamyx 1.0 Mbps and Celcom Broadband 3.6Mpbs. Streamyx has been with our family for years, and it was a 512 Kbps package before it’s been upgraded to 1.0 Mbps not long ago. Celcom Broadband on the other hand was subscribed this year in February, following my nature of work, which requires me to travel to places all around Malaysia and the necessity to be online for work purpose. Both of the broadband providers need no official introductions I think, since their reputation (be it good or bad, u be the judge!) are well known among Malaysians.

Ever since I started working and been outside my hometown, Streamyx has not been fully utilised up to its full potential. Both of my parents used it merely for chatting online via YM with my sister, and for normal surfing. And as I have mentioned earlier, I do travel a lot and frequent, and that is why I decided to opt for Celcom Broadband, so that I can always stay connected anywhere I go.

Let’s start with Celcom broadband first. It has been with me for quite a few months and I am not totally satisfied with it. Technically speaking, its network performance does not match with the self-proclaimed “This is Celcom Territory” ad campaign. The ad itself, together with the tag line “The widest coverage” really tricked me into relying on their internet services. I must be fair to mention that, although there were times where it did deliver what it promised, the rest of the times, it failed to do so. Right now I am thinking of terminating my Celcom broadband service for good.

Streamyx, on the other hand, surprisingly serves me and my family well all this while, even though several hiccups such as network breakdowns and service interruptions do happen once in a while. Ever since I moved back to Penang and stayed at my home, I have been using Streamyx more frequently compared to Celcom Broadband. I must admit that I am totally impressed with the speed I got recently. As mention before in my previous post, the speed is excellent and enables me to download quite a hefty amount of dvd rip movies from the internet. An example is of the one shown below, where it managed to go up to 149kB/s from an overseas torrent tracker site.



But please don’t expect to get the speed by default; you have to work for it. I, for instance, have to fine tuned the utorrent with the correct settings and also do port forwarding on my router before miracle happens.

And finally, the long awaited P1 Wimax has made its mark on Malaysian broadband scene. To be honest, I have never experience the service first hand which automatically rule me out from making bias comments about it. I am however, quite tranced with the ad wars between P1 Wimax and TM Streamyx. If my stand is correct, P1 starts the ad war by their infamous “potong” ad. The ads is really catchy and does have double meaning, if you know what I mean, although what P1 wants to deliver to consumer is to cut down the wired broadband and opt to their service. To prevent its line from being cut, TM has answered by declaring ad war with P1 Wimax. Their first move is sarcastic enough by featuring a frustrated customer tries his best to get the signal out of his wireless broadband.

If that is not hurtful enough, that customer happens to resemble P1’s own CEO Michael Lai, ouch!

The ad war continues on tv, radio, and any mass media u can imagine, and it is fun to watch such healthy competitions, and more importantly, both P1 and TM come out with a very humorous way to battle each other. As for me, I will just sit back and enjoy the movies I have downloaded from the Internet.

Anyone that have any experience with any ISP here in Malaysia are welcome to share their thoughts by posting comments here.