Dato Zam Interview with BFM

Part on capping is at 37:41 into the interview.

Some excerpts:

Fair Usage means that all our paying customers means they should be treated fairly. Heavy users tend to hog the network at the expense of the non-heavy users. The challenge is how we can implement this best we can and so that it is truly fair for the customer.

On how he is going to resolve the capping issue?

We will find a way out immediately, today we are looking at some parameters that will allow the equilibrium of usage. If it’s still a challenge in the next 1-2 days, I’m going to pull that out first and then we will relook, get feedback from our users and see how we can do this better.

Updated with TM’s Official Response on the International Capping.

If you are still experiencing problems you should send your speedtest results to impact@tm.com.my on the 1 December 2010 onwards (e-mail is at the time of writing not up yet).

Best way is to enclose speedtest.net reports from SG and Cyberjaya and compare them with the other MY servers and TM’s own speedometer.

Quote from TM

Telekom Malaysia Bhd ™ wishes to clarify on our Fair Usage Policy (FUP) and address several comments in the blogosphere on allegations of a  ‘hard cap’ for international bandwidth being enforced by TM.

Firstly, we apologise for the inconvenience that our customers are currently facing on our internet services.

We would like to assure all our customers that it is not, in any way TM’s intention to enforce any ‘hard caps’ on our customers.

As a matter of principle, however, TM needs to abide by a FUP to ensure that the network caters to all customers in a fair manner, and this has been in place for a few years for Streamyx which is a contended, best effort service. This means the Streamyx network is catered to be shared by everybody at any point in time to ensure everybody gets a “fair share” of the bandwidth. Currently UniFi is not affected, as it is a new premium service.

The Streamyx “Fair Usage Policy” is available on our website (http://www.streamyx.com/customer_care/customer_care.php?id=customer_care_fair_usage_policy) and it basically describes the list of specific heavy usage activities (like P2P and gaming) that will be managed during peak periods.

As you all know, this kind of bandwidth management or FUP is a global and common telco and celco industry practice. It is already in place in Malaysia amongst the mobile broadband players and aimed at making sure our broadband service is fast and reliable whenever in use.  It is designed to benefit all users, especially normal or non-heavy users during peak periods, so that all can enjoy higher and fair browsing and surfing speed.

In general, TM’s FUP and implementation is aimed at providing an optimum internet experience to all Streamyx customers by rationalising the internet speed during peak periods (3pm – 1am).

Of late, our traffic profiles are changing quite rapidly, and we are noticing that network congestion can hit different parts of the country at different times of the day or week. When congestion hits, depending on the usage patterns, customers subscribing to the same package but generating different traffic patterns may experience different levels of service performance.

In an effort to ensure a fair distribution of resources amongst all customers at all times, whenever congestion occurs, TM’s network is able to calculate how many users are active at any given time and allocate dynamically the resources across all customers with active sessions.

In rare cases of heavy congestion, we ensure that no customers may get below a minimum threshold of international bandwidth, but there is no ‘ceiling’ to the bandwidth each customer can get.

The problems some customer are experiencing now may have stemmed post a successful pilot of a new traffic management model we ran a few months before, following which we went nationwide about 3 weeks ago. Clearly there is room for improvement and we are working hard to resolve this.

As dynamic allocation of bandwidth requires some specific settings that need to be fine tuned area by area, we elicit and welcome feedback on the experience in different parts of the country at different times of the day. We have set up a special email account where you can send your readings for our review: impact@tm.com.my effective 1 December 2010.

From our analysis, the current traffic patterns are, for most part, in line with our expectations on traffic management, and the speeds being delivered should suffice for a smooth internet experience.

Where the internet experience falls short, we will further investigate both individual cases and the service in its entirety to address specific concerns that they may be facing, and will respond to these customers directly.

Rest assured, TM takes note of all customer feedback to continuously ensure improved customer experience end-to-end.

From a market communications perspective, the FUP awareness campaign is already ongoing and we will further clarify as to the rules we are implementing – and why.

In fact, a bloggers briefing has already been scheduled for 17 December post our engagement with LYN and Kambingz earlier. About 40-50 selected bloggers will be invited to represent the wider blogger community to keep them abreast with our efforts to improve service delivery and customer experience overall, and to seek constructive feedback on these efforts. We hope to address, or at least start to address many concerns at this forum.

We thank you for your continuous feedback and ask for your kind understanding and patience as we work to deliver on our commitment to service quality and overall customer experience.

TELEKOM MALAYSIA BHD

Updated with New Info on How to Complain 28 November 2010!

PROBLEM

TM appears to becapping INTERNATIONAL traffic on certain Streamyx accounts. This has happened for perhaps the past 2 weeks or so.
This is regardless of

a) usage of the user (both low usage and high usage users are affected)
b) type of traffic (HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/P2P are all affected) as long as they are international

SYMPTOMS

1. The caps appear to be hard caps. There is NO fluctuation in speed, it just appears as if it’s maxed out at 50 kB/sec. Some 4 mbit users report being capped at 200 kB/sec and I have a 512 customer being capped at about 25 kB/sec and saw some 1 mbit customers having the same thing. It does look like an intentional cap as they are in common multiples.

2. No appearance of packet loss though at times there may be high latencies.

3. Speedtests to local servers except Cyberjaya are fine but speedtest to Singapore/Cyberjaya/any other outside server shows the hard cap speed.

4. This appears to be indiscriminate as it applies to ALL types of international transfers be it http/P2P/FTP.

5. Cap appears to come on a schedule where people are capped in the afternoon then uncapped in the evenings or vice versa. Schedule appears to be different for different people.

HOW YOU CAN HELP/RESOLVE YOUR ISSUE

The problems some customer are experiencing now may have stemmed post a successful pilot of a new traffic management model we ran a few months before, following which we went nationwide about 3 weeks ago. Clearly there is room for improvement and we are working hard to resolve this.

As dynamic allocation of bandwidth requires some specific settings that need to be fine tuned area by area, we elicit and welcome feedback on the experience in different parts of the country at different times of the day. We have set up a special email account where you can send your readings for our review: impact@tm.com.my effective 1 December 2010.

What this means is, if you feel you’re experiencing international cap symptoms, you should send your speedtest results to impact@tm.com.my (effective 1 December 2010).

Best way is to enclose speedtest.net reports from SG and Cyberjaya and compare them with the other MY servers and TM’s own speedometer.

Few Steps how to complaint

You have several ways of making sure this problem is resolved. First is through the official channels, secondly is through media and thirdly is through trying to get in touch with the big shots in the Government to bring this issue to their attention.

As most things, best to do it all at once so you don’t waste time if one avenue fails.

SKMM will not entertain your report unless you open a query with TM support first.

This is what you will get with a direct SKMM report:

With reference to your complaint no. 0618/11/10  regarding the above matter, we would like to advise you to first lodge the complaint to the relevant service provider (example: TM/Packet One/U Mobile/Maxis/Celcom/Digi etc) for their attention and immediate action to resolve the complaint.

In the event that you are not satisfied with the resolution of the complaint provided by the relevant service provider or your complaint remain unresolved, please forward your complaint together with the supporting document or any additional information (account number / report number / bill statement / mobile number or any other related information) to the Communications and Multimedia Consumer Forum of Malaysia (CFM) for further action.

Step 1

Open a support request with TM either through their helpline (100) or e-mail help@tm.com.my
Detail the problem with your speedtest results and show how only international connections are affected (speedtest.net with SG or Cyberjaya servers). Do not waste your time with ‘resetting modem’ etc etc. If you know how to, give ping reports.

Give them 2-3 days to respond.

Step 2

Assuming their response doesn’t solve your problem (which is the most likely case), open up a complain at CFM.

http://www.complaint.cfm.org.my/

Register an account there and then fill up the form:

Step 3

If all above fails, then go to SKMM and open a complaint there and hopefully with enough genuine complaints, we can force some action out of this hugely unethical and possibly unlawful throttling.

Media Contacts

Thanks to Roz Ariffin for the link
For Newspaper The Star, write your opinion about TMNet Caps here :

Mail : @THE EDITOR, Menara Star, 15 Jalan 16/11, Section 16, 46350, Petaling Jaya
Emel : editor@thestar.com.my

Utusan Malaysia :

Mail : Pengarang(ruangan Forum), Utusan Malaysia, 46M, Jalan Lima melalui Jalan Chan Sow Lin, 55200, Kuala Lumpur
Emel : forum@utusan.com.my

NST :

Mail : The Editor, New Straits Times, 31, Jalan Riong, 59100, Kuala Lumpur.
Emel : letters@nst.com.my

Please don’t forget to include your name, address and telephone number. Without doing this, all Malaysian people will not know about TMNet cap.

Twitter: RT this!

@TMCorp TM daylight robbery by arbitrarily capping broadband connections way below subscribed speeds. Pls RT http://bit.ly/gsEq5U

Government Contacts

1Malaysia Najib Razak’s Blog
NajibRazak’s Twitter

Credits To Reuben for bringing up this matter to public

I am unsure whether this is triggered by data usage or otherwise but here are the symptoms:

1. The caps appear to be hard caps. There is NO fluctuation in speed, it just appears as if it’s maxed out at 50 kB/sec. Some 4 mbit users report being capped at 200 kB/sec and I have a 512 customer being capped at about 25 kB/sec and saw some 1 mbit customers having the same thing. It does look like an intentional cap as they are in common multiples.

2. No appearance of packet loss

3. Speedtests to local servers except Cyberjaya are fine but speedtest to Singapore/Cyberjaya/any other outside server shows the hard cap speed.

4. This appears to be indiscriminate as it applies to ALL types of international transfers be it http/P2P/FTP.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Don’t waste your time with TM’s customer support. They are ill-informed and don’t have any idea of this problem.

Best is to go directly to the SKMM and open a complaint there and hopefully with enough genuine complaints, we can force some action out of this hugely unethical and possibly unlawful throttling.

LYN REPORTS:

Many LYN Reports also appear to show the same thing:

badang_1785
MrComot
disket
figure8
myandylai
ericee9
huh?
Hornet

Sample of report of speedtest

I have been experiencing the same problem of connection slowdown for almost 24 hours. ive tested with different ip’s, eg. 60.50, 60.49, 60.52, 60.53, 124.82 all to no avail. ive tested my connection and noticed that ;

a) tm speedometer gave me full normal speed of 1.5 Mbps ;

b) speedtest.net speedometer gave constant 0.5 Mbps to all international servers ive tried ; singapore, UK and US

c) speedtest.net speedometer to Penang, KL and Seri Kembangan gave good, full speed of 1.5 Mbps

d) speedtest.net speedometer to Cyberjaya however gave 0.5 Mbps only

e) ping tests to international websites were around 250ms-350ms

f) a torrent download from ipt with more than 150 seeders got stuck at 0.5 Mbps only with either VPN, bolehroute or direct streamyx connection

g) upload speed to all servers anywhere were around 0.3 Mbps – 0.35 Mbps

ive concluded that something was wrong with tm’s routing so ive called up their support line earlier this evening. opened up a report about this and the technician said *probably* theres something wrong with the routing since she cant event re-set my port connection; the system would not respond. below ive got some example ;

direct connection speedtest to singapore;

direct connection speedtest to UK;

direct connection to US;

direct connection to Penang, KL and Seri Kembangan;

the odd part, speedtest to Cyberjaya;

the above results are the same with other ip ranges as i stated above.

*Credits to Reuben* Taken from http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/1648653

Due to this, customers using Internet services may now experience slow browsing while accessing content hosted in the U.S. and Hong Kong. In addition, customers using other IP services such as Virtual Private Network (VPN) and other critical business applications linked to the U.S. and Hong Kong may also experience some service degradation.

To alleviate the problem, some of the links have been rerouted to alternate routes to ease the congestion.

During the restoration process, traffic to Northern America and Hong Kong may experience minor degradation while traffic to other countries is not affected. TM will make further announcements on the progress of the restoration works.

TM wishes to assure its customers that it is undertaking all necessary measures to restore communications services for its customers as soon as possible.

Customers can call TM at 100 and select “Internet Services” or e-mail us at help@tm.com.my for any Internet related problems.

Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) wishes to announce that its consortium members have detected a cable fault on the South East Asia – Middle East – Western Europe 4 (SMW4) cable network along the Colombo – Mumbai segment that links Malaysia to Europe. The consortium will be carrying out repair works on site on Sunday, 23 May 2010.

During the restoration process, there may be some interruption to the traffic to Europe carried through that cable. TM has taken pro-active steps to minimize disruptions by providing adequate links on other routes and coordinated with other international carriers in order to provide additional bandwidth for our customers. In order to further alleviate the situation, TM will also be diverting traffic to other networks to reduce congestion, thus, minimizing the impact to our users.

However, despite these initiatives, customers using Internet services nationwide may experience some degree of service degradation such as slow browsing while accessing international websites. Nevertheless, customers using Virtual Private Network (VPN) and other critical business applications linked to Europe will be assured minimal degradation of service, if any.

TM will provide necessary updates on the progress of the restoration works.

We apologize for any inconveniences caused by this disruption, whilst at the same time, would like to assure our customers that TM is undertaking all necessary measures to ensure that customers experience minimal service interruption.

TM wishes to thank its customers for their understanding and patience during the affected period. Meanwhile, customers can call TM at 100 and select “Technical Assistance” or email help@tm.com.my for any Internet related problems.?

Kindly reply here for feedback regarding your speed.

This is what happened if u can’t deliver 100Mbps to Hitler

Go to i.e or firefox browser type http://192.168.1.1  <– certain modem have different default ip address checkup your Modem Manual for instruction.

Pls note that u also can check how fast the ISP Capped your speed . If you subscribe to 1 Mbps the ISP should capped you at 1024kbps or 1524kbps. Having caps higher speed is better because u can enjoy higher speed but most ISP now capped ur speed via ur username example if u have 1 Mbps the best speed u can got is around 1.5 Mbps even though the isp capped you at 4024kbps

They are also certain issues when people subscribe 1 Mbps but the ISP capped their line at 512kbps so they can’t enjoy the true speed of their broadband. Using this tips u can check yourself whether you are capped at the correct speed.  Please note if ur ADSL is bad having high caps will have your attenuation noise higher that will cause DSL light to blink that’s why u have to read this tips.

Sample of 1 Mbps line Quality

SN Margin (AKA Signal to Noise Margin or Signal to Noise Ratio)
Relative strength of the DSL signal to Noise ratio. 6dB is the lowest dB manufactures specify for modem to be able to synch. In some instances interleaving* can help raise the noise margin to an acceptable level. The higher the number the better for this measurement.
> 6dB or below is bad and will experience no synch or intermittent synch problems
> 7dB-10dB is fair but does not leave much room for variances in conditions
> 11dB-20dB is good with no synch problems
> 20dB-28dB is excellent
> 29dB or above is outstanding

Line Attenuation
Measure of how much the signal has degraded between the DSLAM and the modem. Maximum signal loss recommendation is usually about 60dB. The lower the dB the better for this measurement.
> 20dB and below is outstanding
> 20dB-30dB is excellent
> 30dB-40dB is very good
> 40dB-50dB is good
> 50dB-60dB is poor and may experience connectivity issues
> 60dB or above is bad and will experience connectivity issues

Due to public comment via twitter and blog TM.Nut already put off the caps for now for VIP Packages. This is only temporary for now . So if you’re a heavy user just spend another RM 50 to get the Biz5 Packages so you can play safe. More will be updated soon