In Malaysia, if you wanted broadband access, you don't get much choices except sticking with TMNet's Streamyx, especially so when you are living outside the capital Kuala Lumpur. I earn my living through the Internet, it feeds me and my family and you would understand how important a stable connection means to me. My journey began approximately on the 15th of December 2006, when I realised that I have intermittent connections and disruptive access to my online work.

Having searched the net and reading blog post, I saw that my SNR margin is way below 12dB. So I shoot off an email to Streamyx customer care, and only in about middle of March, that everything got temporarily resolved. Here's a rough description of what went on:

• Shoot off email to customer care as calling them would mean at least 30 minutes of being on hold, talking to a person who do not know what you are talking about and given the standard, reboot your adsl modem, connect direct to line, etc. A couple of days went by without any replies.
• Reply came with standard "sorry for the late reply", reboot adsl modem, connect direct to line instructions. Send back an email saying, done all that but problem persist. Went on to explain my problem, which is Signal To Noise (SNR) margin too low. For a stable connection, you would need 10-12 dB for SNR margin, and mine was between 6-8 dB. So my CRC errors shoot way up. In short, in order for me to access a website, a packet of data would be sent to me, and since my line quality is bad, having a low signal to noise ratio, that packet of data end up corrupted on my PC. So it will have to be resent, and resent, and thus accessing a website takes years.
• Got an email asking me to take the TMNET speed test and to provide ping results, saying it is OK if you get speed of about 70-80% of promised. I subscribe to the 512K package. Having took the speed test and ping, I supplied the results to them, but explained further that my problem is not speed. The packet of data got sent and received speedily, only the fact that it is corrupted does not help.
• Got a couple more emails of standard reboot your modem stuffs, before I got a call and them some technician came over. He have a look, meaning coming inside my house, asking me what was wrong, I said low SNR margin, and he said he can't do anything, he'll come back., all within less than a minute. He DID NOT come back.
• After a couple more emails, the technician came back and said it's a line problem and since he is from the "Streamyx" department, he can't do anything and asked me to contact the "line" department. WE, lowly malaysian citizens have to understand in depth the organization of our local telecom monopoly in order for us to get some decent help.
• I contacted the "line" department, after spending more than an hour on the phone and finally after a couple of days, someone came over. This is now in the middle of Febuary and they changed the wire between the telephone pole behind my house to my house. NO IMPROVEMENT. So they say that my house telephone wiring may have problems and water may have gone into the wiring, degrading the line quality. I asked them to pull a wire direct to my modem, through my window just temporarily. NO IMPROVEMENT either. That takes out the possibility that my house telephone wiring has problems.
• So they say they will ask headquarters to lower my bandwidth. You see, they pushed up my ADSL bandwidth to 1.5M but since I subscribed to a 512K package, the 1.5M bandwidth was somehow limited to 512K, probably through a router on their side which they can easily set limits through software. Since I have a low quality line, the more bandwidth you try to cram in, the SNR margin will go even lower. So lowering bandwidth will have the effect of improving SNR margin. So HQ, lowered my bandwidth to 512K but within a day, I can't connect to the Internet entirely.
• Another week or two later, they did the lowering of my bandwidth properly and everything was fine for a while.

It takes more than 3 months, all the while I was paying for a promised 512K "best effort" ADSL connection, which would more aptly be called "lottery" 512K connection. If you are lucky, you get the connection, otherwise "best" and "effort" does not even begin to describe the connection. 3 months is a lifetime in internet time, and has effected my work greatly, but then our telecom monopoly has no idea nor does it seems to care.

In the middle of March, I got a new ADSL modem, DLINK DSL2640+ modem, which is a great wireless modem, and managed to get a better SNR margin. However, starting from a few days before 23rd of April, especially during peak hours and evenings, my SNR margin would degrade badly, sometimes to 3dB or even 0dB (zero). How my DLINK modem managed to connect at 0DB, I don't know but I'm amazed. Websites, email and everything else cannot be accessed, I can't work and I am getting constant payment reminders to pay my non existent connection. CRC error shoot through the roof to the region of tens of thousands.

All these while, I have been patient, and have gone through the proper channels to work things out. I shoot an email to TMNET on the 23rd of April and again, requested help. It is now 27th of April, 4 days after my email (2 of them) and I have not got any replies, only acknowledgements.

My question is, what does it takes for a telecom monopoly to buck up? To understand the meaning of the word "customer"? Remedying the situation is clearly within their means and yet, nothing is done, but why?

We, being the lowly customers that we are, are we really powerless? Does it take a guy to go to the new spanky Telecom building and HQ and camp there to get things done and remedied? Would a single guy, politics aside, went on a hunger strike there to get a decent connection? Would it work? Would a gathering of all dissatisfied customers there at an arranged time, wake the monopoly?

I am powerless, but will log and properly document my communications with them this time round, hopefully resulting in a stable, proper connection. I know, there is no hope, but don't blame me, I am an optimist. Bye for now.