Thursday February 8, 2007

Throttling broadband access for all

Comment: By A. ASOHAN

ERRANT motorists are causing havoc on the highway, disregarding traffic laws and eluding law enforcement.

Automobile manufacturers, particularly the sports car guys, have announced they will build into their vehicles devices to lower their maximum speeds.

You can imagine a Ferrari salesman’s pitch going something like this: “Datuk, this baby’s got a 400-horsepower, 12-cylinder engine that’ll take you from 0 to 140kph in five seconds!

“Oh, but don’t worry, we’re restricting its speed to 60kph ... don’t want you driving too fast now, do we?”

I know what you’re thinking. A stupid idea, right? Who would want to sell a sports car with deliberately built-in speed limits? More importantly, who would even want to buy one?

Yet a similar scenario is playing itself out in Malaysian cyberspace. After years of under-achievement in our national broadband aspirations, the network service providers are taking a couple of steps back.

Cognitive dissonance territory here, or as my kids would put it, “Duh!”

Maxis did it first when it rolled out its wireless broadband service last year. Under the “Terms and Conditions” of usage, it had this little gem: “Maxis may, at its sole discretion, automatically disconnect the customer’s Internet session after a period of inactivity, which may vary from 20 minutes to 30 minutes.”

And if that’s not all, here’s the clincher: “Each customer’s total usage per month shall NOT exceed 3GB of data volume transmitted ...”

Now rumours have been flying that the country’s No 1 Internet service provider (ISP) TM Net is proposing to do something similar with its Streamyx broadband service.

So, you have these great big pipes and you can sign up for one of those unlimited, always-on packages.

But you’re not going to get those big pipes, and you’ll find that the word “unlimited” has an alternate definition in ISP-speak. Always on? Well, except for those times they choose to close some ports and cut you off, that is.

That’s right, more speed bumps on the information superhighway.

The ISPs have their reasons, of course. Foremost among them is network optimisation, or making the best of what you’ve got. They’ll tell you they don’t want a few hardcore users hogging the network.

One ISP said it found out that 1% of its users were using up 30% of its bandwidth. Some will even tell you they’re trying to combat illegal downloads and online piracy.

Terms such as “traffic shaping” and others are being bandied about. This is what ISPs in other countries are doing after they found out their services had been over-subscribed. But at least those foreign ISPs had to admit their infrastructure was not up to par.

Malaysian ISPs, on the other hand, are complaining about the slow adoption rate, and have conducted multi-million ringgit-marketing campaigns to boost subscription.

So despite these complaints, demand is far outstripping supply, even if the ISPs don’t want to admit it. It’s logical, isn’t it? If your network is being under-utilised, why would you need to restrict access? Duh!

The lay of the online land has changed in the last few years. Media-rich websites are now the norm. Just check out the graphics-heavy content and advertisements popping up here and there on most of the prominent sites.

Podcasts and streaming video are no longer the exclusive domain of entertainment or lifestyle portals, but are regular features even on mainstream newspaper sites such as The Star Online.

Here is the truth of the matter: Broadband Internet access is no longer a luxury; it’s fast becoming the default.

No surprises here. We have been expecting this for years now. For more than a decade, our leaders have been talking about information and communications technology (ICT), particularly computer use and the Internet, and its importance in meeting strategic national initiatives.

We were among the first countries in the world to come out with legislation that addressed the convergence of various ICTs. We foresaw the impact this was going to have on industries and societies locally and across the globe.

It’s hard to reconcile all that energy and vision with the reality today, where we can boast of having a higher broadband penetration rate than, say, Greece.

As at last June, our broadband penetration rate was 2.5% of the population and 9.1% of households. Singapore’s household broadband penetration was 57.4%, South Korea’s was 85.1%.

Sure, it’s different with those countries. We can’t compete with them. That’s not the point. The fact is, we can’t even meet our own objectives, as laid out in the Malaysian Information, Communications and Multimedia Services 886 strategy.

The national plan, with the ungainly acronym MyICMS 886, aims for 2.8 million household subscribers or a 50% broadband penetration rate by 2008 (that’s just next year) and a 75% penetration rate by 2010.

No, stop laughing. It’s true. It’s even achievable, assuming we don’t throttle our own aspirations with, I don’t know, services such as choked broadband, restricted unlimited access and, my all-time favourite, only-sometimes always-on access.

Malaysia was there at the forefront of this wave. Now, we’re lagging. We’ve had the legislation, the pent-up consumer demand and the various national initiatives for some time now. The people are ready and the Government has done enough.

At the risk of committing the cardinal writing sin of mixing metaphors, it’s now time for the ISPs to step up to the plate and tell us they’re with the programme.

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