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Testing With Celcom Broadband Prepaid

If you recall, I published my Malaysia Wireless Broadband Buying Guide some time ago, and thought it was due for a review, in light of new developments. So, in the process of updating this guide, I did two significant things: I signed up for a U Mobile data only postpaid account, at a cost of RM 68 nett monthly.
I purchased the new Celcom Broadband Prepaid Starter Pack at a cost of RM 25, with RM 20 preloaded credit. There are a few things you may need to know about the Celcom Broadband Prepaid product: it is a data only product, you can't make or receive voice calls with it.
it cannot send SMSes to numbers other than "short code" numbers. Short code numbers are numbers like "2888", "28882", etc.
it can receive SMSes from any number, but it cannot reply except if the sending number is a short code number (see 2 above).
you can check your balance using SMS to a short code number.
you can check the broadband subscription status using SMS to a pre-determined short code number.
when you buy a daily or weekly broadband prepaid, it is truly following the "24 hours clock system" - for example, if you purchase a daily broadband prepaid package, and activate it at 10:10, your subscription will expire at 10:09 the next day.
when you buy the broadband prepaid pack, you need to activate it first by sending an SMS to a pre-determined short code number.
the maximum surfing/download speed for the prepaid packages is 3G/UMTS only, ie. 384kbps. Your modem may say it is connected at HSDPA/3.5G, but you can't go beyond 384kbps.
You can use up to 2 Gb for the 7 days, after which, your speed will be throttled down to 64kbps, at which time, it's better to just throw the SIM away. So, on to my experience. Activating the broadband facility was easy. It was done within a minute. The next step was purchasing the weekly prepaid broadband package - this was also very straightforward - activation was done within 2 minutes. Then off I went! I was online within 2 minutes of signing up. There was the occasional glitch - see the screenshot below - which I have encountered twice so far while trying to load a webpage when I slotted the SIM into a Sierra Wireless USB broadband modem. Now that I've switched the SIM into my Nokia 5800, I doubt I'll see this page again unless I'm surfing using the web browser on the phone - which will be rare since it's used primarily for my push email using System Seven's application. I will be updating my Twitter account with speedtest results over the course of the next 7 days while using this weekly prepaid broadband package from Celcom, so if you're not following me on Twitter yet, now's a good time to do so! Sign up for an account here, then follow me here. Click here for the Celcom Prepaid Broadband webpage. If there's anything you want to know which I've not covered here, feel free to drop a comment! Some pictures of the starter pack for your enjoyment below. Click on the thumbnails for a bigger picture!

Mobile | Standard