Bad news for people whose areas are still not covered by the UniFi service. Through no fault of your own, if your area gets covered after 1st October 2010, you are now required to pay RM 200 in installation charges. TM says:
Starting from 1st October 2010 TM will begin charging a one-time fee of RM200 for UniFi installation. This installation charge is across the board; covering the UniFi VIP5, VIP10 and VIP 20 triple-play consumer packages as well as the BIZ5, BIZ10 and BIZ20 business packages. For convenience, the UniFi installation charge will be spread in instalments over a period of 5-months at RM40 per month and will be reflected in the customer’s monthly bills.
Equipment such as the fibre modem, etc are still free – TM says that they are worth RM 800. Errr…OK. I believe you are still required to sign up for 24 months.
If you ask me, I’d say unless you are a hardcore downloader, don’t subscribe, because of the long contract. I’ve never liked contracts, and despise long term ones. This is because six months down the road, the UniFi service may be cheaper, but yet you are still contracted to pay the higher rate. I’d rather pay for a reasonable installation charge, and reasonable pricing for equipment which can be returned to TM in the event of service cancellation, assuming the equipment is in working order, and not have to be forced into signing up for a long term contract.
If you can still find a contract-free 4mbps Streamyx package, I think this is a better deal as you can cancel anytime.
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TM also recently reported its financial numbers for the second quarter of 2010, and like Maxis’ numbers, reported an increase in data revenues. It also says that data revenues will continue to be more important as time progresses. Revenue growth quarter-on-quarter was 1%, “led by increasing demand in Internet and data services“. Internet revenues now account for 20% of group revenues and is likely to grow as TM keeps losing fixed line customers to mobile players.
TM now has 4,800 UniFi customers as at 30th June 2010 with total orders exceeding 12,000 – now that’s a lot of backlog to clear! TM says that to improve quality of service:
Towards this end, TM is committed to spend at least 5.0% of revenue this year on customers’ quality improvement initiatives.
Errr, OK…what does that mean, exactly? Isn’t customer satisfaction directly related to the quality of service, for example, bandwidth that they enjoy, in the case of internet customers? Shouldn’t this be the focus of customer satisfaction improvement initiatives, rather than spending on “customers’ quality improvement initiatives” which means nothing much really?
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Maxis launched the latest version of the previous generation iPhone, the 3GS model, with 8GB of capacity, which was announced at the same time in June this year along with the iPhone 4. And sadly, it is not that affordable, when compared to its pricing in Singapore. Maxis’ RRP for the 3GS 8GB is RM 1,990, compared to S $748 in Singapore, approximately RM 1,738.
With the pricing of the 3GS 8GB, I think we can have a rough guess as to the selling price of the iPhone 4 in Malaysia. My guess is that the RRP for the 16GB will be RM 2,390, while the 32GB will sell for RM 2,790. As for the plans, I don’t foresee any changes from the current iValue or iData plans. And I think it’s unlikely that the iPhone 4 will be available on the prepaid or contract-free plan; even if it was, there should be some sort of “bonding” if you want to go prepaid, perhaps in the form of monthly rebates or something.
My advice for people who are still interested in getting the 3GS – get it on prepaid – all you need to do is buy a Hotlink prepaid starter pack at RM 8.80 which comes with RM 5 credit. You also get 500MB of free data monthly for one entire year, worth RM 600 (using the pricing for the iData 2 package as a benchmark).
The 3GS 8GB is only available at the following Maxis Centres:
Meanwhile, DiGi is still sleeping on the job; there’s nothing yet on the 3GS 8GB on their iPhone page.
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Maxis recently reported its second quarter financial numbers, and the results were mainly in line with analysts expectations. Revenue in the second quarter was 2.8% higher than the first. Among the highlights were, according to the official press release:
- Shareholders were rewarded with a second interim dividend of 8 sen per share.
- Strong quarterly revenues at RM2.2 billion with a 2.8% underlying growth over quarter one, and industry-best EBITDA of RM1028 million and Profit after Tax (PAT) of RM532 million.
- Net subscriber additions of 280 thousand, with an impressive 47% cumulative market share of net additions over the last four quarters amongst Malaysia’s three major operators, and the first to touch 13 million subscribers shortly after the quarter.
- Record non-voice revenues of 36.6% of mobile revenues
- Highest wireless broadband net additions for the industry in the quarter at 135 thousand, at a market share of net additions of 53% amongst three major operators and quarter on quarter revenue growth of 32%.
Basically, the data segment of the business is continuing to grow – both 3G and mobile wireless broadband services, which is not surprising, given how the internet has grown in popularity in this country. And almost everyone focusing on the provision of mobile or wireless broadband, hopefully the fierce competition will drive prices down for consumers. Non data revenues now account for 36.6% of total revenues, up from 34.8% in the first quarter.
Maxis is now reported to have 448,000 wireless broadband subscribers, a growth of 43% over the first quarter, in contrast to P1 who has a customer base of 196,000 at the end of the second quarter. I presume the Maxis numbers do not include their customers who access the internet on their mobile phones using the 3G service. I guess these numbers give you an idea of the ferocity of the competition in the area of wireless broadband.
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Dated 30th August 2010, version 100030. This is for the folks out there who can’t be bothered/don’t understand how to download the Mapsource version and generate the necessary .img file to be used with Garmin Mobile XT(GMXT)/Garmin Mobile PC (GMPC). Download it here or here.
Please note that this is the full map, with road PoIs and business PoIs,but no Chinese POIs included. Extract the .img file from the archive and place it in the “garmin” folder for GMXT or the “GarminMobilePC” folder for Garmin Mobile PC (GMPC).
Download the Lite version here or here.
If you want to download the Mapsource installer to generate whatever map file yourself, you can download it here or here.
Credits as usual, go to malfreemaps. Please go to their site to contribute to make it a better map! Contribute feedback for this map here.
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