Thursday, October 30, 2008

M'sian ISPs' fair usage policies, P1 Wimax gotchas

Vincent Chow has done a good job of tracking down the "fair usage" policies of our local ISPs. These are basically the bandwidth caps (limits) that may be enforced by our ISPs. Folks really need to read the fine print before signing up for services. So far, there hasn't been widespread enforcement of these caps, but the ISPs have a legal right to do so because you've agreed to the T&Cs.

Read his post here:
Comparing Fair Usage Policies among Malaysian ISPs

In a related issue, I was checking out the terms and conditions for P1's Wimax service, one of the first available in Malaysia. A couple of "gotchas" stood out:

1. If you want to use the Wimax service beyond the 50km radius of your registered address, you'll need to pay an extra RM10 a month. P1 calls it "Nationwide Access Service". I call it a roaming fee.

2. Bandwidth is capped at 20GB a month, which includes both upload and download usage. That works out to about 667MB a day, if you want to use it every day. Not quite enough for people like me, but it's still better than Maxis' and Celcom's plans.

Previously:
Celcom's so-called unlimited 3G broadband has a 5GB cap

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lame... what's the point of a high-speed internet connection if there's a cap? Grrr....

Danny said...

It's so other users can use the Internet as fast as the rest. Otherwise, hardcore downloaders would steal too much bandwidth to enable the casual users to play buffer-less YouTube videos.