Posted on Friday, 2nd July 2010 by Kash

This month, in keeping with the spirit of football, I am going to talk about how one telco dropped the ball while another one scored a brilliant goal.

Good Plan Bad Plan

A few weeks ago, I terminated one of my mobile lines. I did not want to do it but the plan had become so unfavourable that I either had to terminate or get it changed. Last year I had signed up for this plan on a 2-year contract in return for a free mobile device. When I signed up, I was aware that there would be a penalty if I broke the contract, so there is no issue on that point.

I knew that the penalty was RM150 if I broke the contract and another RM250 essentially for the mobile device. One year later, better plans had emerged from competitors and funnily enough even from this same telco. My plan was no longer a great deal and had become very expensive.

I decided, in all fairness, that I should first ask the concerned telco if I can simply switch plans. To be honest, I was even prepared to pay a small penalty for the paperwork and admin work that would be involved. The way I saw it, the telco would have been delighted as I was still going to remain their subscriber.

But nothing doing, said the telco staff. Even if I want to change to another plan from them, I would still have to pay the full penalty. I must have surprised the girl because I straightaway asked to terminate the line. Read the rest of this entry…

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Posted on Thursday, 1st July 2010 by Kash

It’s a cliché often repeated by mobile industry followers; that voice would one day become a commodity and even possibly free.

I’ve been hearing such statements for years now and it hasn’t happened yet. Phone bill has remained relatively stable all this while and I don’t expect to wake up any day soon to learn that my service provider has made all calls free.

It would be a dream come true but there’s no way that Maxis, Celcom, DiGi or UMobile will do this anytime soon. Not unless they want to commit suicide. Right to this day, most of their revenues (and profits) come from voice calls.

But that long awaited moment, widely predicted by many industry followers worldwide, may not be too far way. Tectonic shifts taking place in the mobile industry are heralding the days when voice will become a commodity. It may be completely free or almost free. Read the rest of this entry…

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Posted on Tuesday, 1st June 2010 by Kash

This Sunday, I joined what must have been the majority of Malaysians in following the results of the Hulu Selangor by-election.  The whole day long, I sought out reports of how the polling was going on. After 5 pm, I eagerly consumed every report that I found which shared updates of unofficial vote counts as they trickled into the counting station.

As I did that I was reminded of that magical night of March 8, 2008 when I did the same thing albeit on a much larger scale. I was struck then by how much things have changed since then. No, I’m not referring to the voter swing that took place in Hulu Selangor; this is a technology magazine, remember?  I’m referring to the way I obtained my information this time around compared to last time around.

To get the General Elections results two years ago, I set up a scratch command centre that consisted of two PCs and a mobile phone. Since internet traffic was at a peak then, most of the sites that had the latest information were pretty much inaccessible. I opened up multiple tabs of sites like Malaysiakini each one pointing to different mirror sites. I also pointed my browser towards many other sites. That way, I ensured that I got updates from one page even if the others crashed. Read the rest of this entry…

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Posted on Friday, 28th May 2010 by Kash

For the last 10 years or so, wireless technologies have been the darlings of the communications industry – and rightfully so. Wired technologies have struggled to bring services to the whole world. Wireless technologies on the other hand seem unstoppable; there are more than 4 billion mobile phone users in the world today and their reach is truly global.

But in a twist of poetic justice, it looks to be time for wired technologies to lord it over their wireless counterparts. The reason for this is the explosion of data consumption by internet users. There is an unbelievable amount of data being consumed these days by users accessing media rich sites like YouTube, Flickr and Facebook. One statistic will put this all into perspective: every minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube.

Data consumption rates have naturally been crashing through the roof. Cisco estimates in a study that the average data consumed per household is 11.4 GB per month. That’s global figures, mind you, which includes countries with slow first generation Internet infrastructure. Now mobile Internet usage is booming and that is sure to add even more strain to the networks. Read the rest of this entry…

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Posted on Tuesday, 20th April 2010 by Kash

The topic of the moment has got to be HSBB. It is certainly telling of the state of our broadband today that the arrival of what we are going to call high speed broadband for the next few years has generatedso much buzz.

I, of course, welcome Unifi, the brand name of Telekom Malaysia’s fibre optic offering. If everything goes well, our office area will have this service before the end of the year and we do plan to sign up for it.

But it is important that we – as with all Malaysians – do not get too caught up in the hype and in the process, overlook several key points.

First, the pricing is high. We’re already paying very high prices for Streamyx and now, we’re being asked to pay RM149 for 5 Mbps, RM199 for 10 Mbps and RM249 for 20 Mbps for home packages. Read the rest of this entry…

Tags: Broadband, Mobile Broadband
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Posted on Friday, 26th March 2010 by Kash

One of my favourite pastimes is coming up with wish lists of features I would like to see on mobile devices. I don’t think I am alone on this; I’m sure most of you have at one time or another thought that it would be great if mobile phones had a particular feature.

In my more fanciful moments I have lusted for Swiss army knives to be built into mobile devices – why not? Mobile phones are always with us, aren’t they? I also want some kind of stun spray to deter off would-be robbers. Other wild ideas I have had for phones include built-in metal detectors (so that I can find rare coins and treasures), a mobile polygraph and a really bright torchlight.

Actually my track record is not too bad. Some years ago I had looked forward to the day when phones could serve as mobile projectors and that future is here already. The recent CES show had a few different companies including Samsung showing off their mobile phone projector technologies. Read the rest of this entry…

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Posted on Thursday, 18th February 2010 by Kash

As you probably know from this issue’s cover, Malaysia’s very own mobile brand CSL is celebrating its 10th anniversary. That’s an amazing feat if you ask me.

For a locally-inspired brand to have not only survived but actually thrived over a decade is truly amazing when you consider how many brands have come and gone over the years. Big and small brands have either fallen to the wayside or are on life support systems and yet CSL continues to grow. They’re even going regional through expansion into Indonesia and other countries. Way to go, CSL!

When I met CSL’s MD Dato’ Eric Chuah Seong Ling recently, I congratulated him and also told him that in honour of CSL’s 10th Anniversary, I would write a 10 point Mobility column in this issue. So here goes. Read the rest of this entry…

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Posted on Wednesday, 6th January 2010 by Kash

The Google Nexus One is revealed; just before CES starts.

From my first impression it’s exactly what I thought it would be – a good first effort that unfortunately won’t match up with the iPhone.

But first efforts rarely do and this is where Apple ought to be worried. So I expect to see an Apple 4G sometime this year to counter coming enhancements from Google and of course Blackberry and Nokia.

Anyway, I’m excited to learn that the Nexus One allows voice dictation wherever you can type in the phone. That’s something Ive ‘been looking forward to on a phone.

The bummer is that when I visited the Nexus One website it said - ‘Sorry, the Nexus One phone is not available in your country.’ It’s  a GSM phone for God’s sake and where I am is GSM heartland so please get it to Malaysia fast.

Tags: Google, Google Phone, Nexus One
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Posted on Friday, 4th December 2009 by Kash

Some interesting statistics that I gleaned from a Bernama news report on Celcom

On Subscribers

Celcom subscriber base surpassed the 10-million mark.

Celcom’s broadband subscribers touched 500,000 mark

Both postpaid and prepaid segments each added 130,000 and 314,000 new subscribers, respectively during Q3 2009.

Business performance

Pre-tax profit for the third quarter ended Sept 30, 2009 rose by 9.5 per cent to RM541 million from RM494 million in the preceding second quarter.

Revenue rose by four per cent to RM1.61 billion from RM1.54 billion previously.

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Posted on Wednesday, 2nd September 2009 by Kash

Nokia President Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo declared today that a new Nokia was being built and more importantly, that they were on attack mode and not defence mode.

The tough talk was backed by actions as Nokia unveiled a series of devices that underline the direction they have chosen. The new flagship device is no longer built on Symbian. The N900 is based on Maemo. Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President, whonalso delivered a keynote address said that the N900 was a 4th generation mobile device starting from the Internet tablets that they built earlier. The 5th generation which will come later would be – according to Nokia – the future of computers. As it is, the N900 is pretty much that.

Nokia also unveiled formally the N97 Mini, the Booklet 3G and two music devices, the X6 and X3. Both music devices will come with the Nokia Comes With Music service.

Key points from the 2 keynotes delivered by Nokia today • All these devices are natural next steps for Nokia • No more vapour announcements any service announced at Nokia World will be available within 48 hours

• The new Nokia is all about openness

• It recognized that change was coming and moved to address the changing environment some time ago. Mistakes were made but Nokia is confident that it is on the right path.

• Nokia will address all segments with devices and services. It was not interested in just having one device for the elite. • For social networking, the future is location aware services. Users can now share not only updates but also their location using Nokia Maps on Facebook.

Olli-Pekka pointed out that critics may say that Nokia is not competitive but the numbers say otherwise. Going forward he said that Nokia would be even more successful once its strategy was fully in place

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