After several exchanges through the media and social network platforms, Gobind Singh Deo, the minister of Communications and Multimedia has assured that the Malaysian government is prepared to assist the telco to find a solution for Streamyx that will benefit everyone. In his tweet, he added that he looks forward to discuss proposals with TM on the matter by next week.
In case you missed it, the minister had criticised TM over the lack of action when it comes to Streamyx users. Despite offering speed bumps and upgrades to Unifi fibre broadband, there are still a significant chunk of Streamyx subscribers who are still stuck with slow and expensive ADSL connectivity.
As a response, TM had reiterated their efforts to improve the experience of current Streamyx users which include migrating 340,000 Streamyx customers within fibre coverage to Unifi and offering 180,000 Streamyx customers who are out of fibre coverage areas with free speed upgrade to 8Mbps at no extra cost.
For the remaining 500,000 Streamyx customers, TM had mentioned on 16 October 2018 that it was seeking for a discussion with the government to reach a beneficial outcome. The latest statement dated 19 October had also reiterated this call for a discussion with the government.
From Gobind’s latest tweet, it appears that both parties are finally coming together to tackle the issue. It is a step in the right direction and hopefully we will get to see price reductions for Streamyx customers.
According to TM’s website, they are currently offering 1Mbps on Streamyx at RM110/month, 2Mbps at RM130/month, 4Mbps at RM140/month and 8Mbps at RM160/month. As a comparison, Unifi’s 30Mbps Fibre broadband with 60GB quota is priced at RM79/month while the 100Mbps Fibre plan with unlimited quota is going for RM129/month. On Monday, MCMC had urged TM to rationalise the disparity between Unifi and Streamyx pricing so that consumers are charged fairly based on the speed they are getting.
Streamyx which runs on copper is very inefficient and costly to maintain in this day and age. Of course it would be ideal to roll out fibre to all existing Streamyx premises but this will take time and further investment.
As mentioned before, one of the fastest way to deliver high-speed broadband to these Streamyx users is by going wireless. TM has its own 4G based Unifi Wireless solution but unfortunately their 4G performance is far behind other telcos in Malaysia. If bulk of these 500,000 Streamyx customers are located in rural areas, perhaps TM can request for assistance from the Ministry via the USP fund.
