TMNUT Screamyx?

I'm sure that a lot of you Tmnet Streamyx (I call it Tmnut Screamyx from now on) users have noticed that our internet speed deteriorated enormously for the past week. In fact this situation is normal since problems like this arises every month, or perhaps every week?

What makes me to blog about this problem anyway? It's so normal in this country that we Screamyx subscribers should have gotten used to it by now. But this thing matters me now because recently, I think I just earned myself the "heavy downloader" status, and this problem had just got me pissed off.

While torrents are as slow as always since they were throttled by Tmnut to "optimize bandwidth", direct downloads shouldn't be affected by it. I was able to download files from Rapidshare @ Teleglobe and Megaupload with at least 100kB/s, if not at full speed @ 180kB/s. That was before last week. Now, neither of them can barely even reach 10kB/s. WTF. I don't think there's anyone that won't get pissed to see this.

And I went to their website to look for their announcements.

31/03/2009
SERVICE INTERRUPTION

Dear Valued Customers,

Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) wishes to announce that there is a disruption of its Internet services due to circuit faults on the SMW3 between Tuas, Singapore and Penang linking Malaysia to Hong Kong and APCN2 near Chongming, China connecting Malaysia to the United States. As a result, customers using the Internet services may experience slow browsing while accessing websites 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.

Restoration works on the affected cables are already in progress. However, during the restoration process, traffic to Northern America and Hong Kong may experience degradation. However, traffic to other countries will not be affected. TM expects complete recovery of its services by 5 April 2009 and 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.


Thank You.

Source: http://www.streamyx.com.my/whats_new/whats_new.php?id=article_20090331

Ok now, what does "As a result, customers using the Internet services may experience slow browsing while accessing websites hosted in the U.S. and Hong Kong" and "However, traffic to other countries will not be affected" means? I can't recall browsing websites hosted in other countries especially European countries were fast. By the way, surfing websites hosted in U.S., H.K. and China were never fast prior to this incident as well!

And, they stated that the problem will be fixed by 5th of April which was 2 days ago, but they have yet to fix it by today. Anyway, I just found out from Lowyat.Net forums that it has been delayed until 8th of April, which is tomorrow. I don't know how real will it be, it's just like dealing with a conman, where the conman always make sweet promises to pay back the money to the victim but always gives some lame reasons to buy some time for him to 走佬 (run away). I hate these kind of empty promises, this is just cheating customers! I wonder how companies like this can exist in this world! Well, only Malaysia has it. MALAYSIA BOLEH!

Update: Just found out again from a fellow forummer that the link to H.K. has been fixed as indicated by speedtest, although the speed is still not that good. Now, let's hope that the link to U.S. can be fixed ASAP, to keep our mouths shut, for now.