Where art thou, broadband users?!

[Dashken]

CYBERJAYA: The Government’s efforts to increase the country’s broadband penetration may have hit a brick wall, if the latest figures from a recent Internet-penetration survey are anything to go by.

According to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia ommission’s (MCMC) Household Use of the Internet Survey 2005 (HUIS 2005), a little over half of the survey's 5,000-odd respondents said they did not see the need to upgrade to broadband connections, and about four-fifths of the respondents said they did not have any intention to upgrade.

MCMC industry development general manager Bistamam Siru Abdul Rahman said the survey results indicated that 56.5% “did not see the need for broadband or are satisfied with their dialup connections,” and 81.4% “did not intend to migrate to broadband access.”

“There is a perceived ‘lack of need’ to upgrade amongst Internet users in this country. As long as there is no need to get into it, people just won’t,” he told reporters at media briefing recently.

Bistamam cited how it took some time for the older generation to accept new technology, such as the TV when it first came to Malaysians in the 1960s.

“It may take some time for broadband to be accepted too,” he said, adding that broadband access in the survey is defined as access only by xDSL (digital subscriber line) technology.

He said he is confident that once users overcome this initial resistance to upgrade to broadband technology and are able to derive benefits from such access, they would be “stuck to it.”

MCMC conducted HUIS 2005 to establish a profile of Malaysian Internet users and to address the “data gap” which the industry regulator said was missing from its database.

The survey – conducted between May 1 and June 30 and only in English – focused specifically on household users and excluded business and cybercafe customers.

Poll position
The survey sampled a total of 4,925 nationwide users, including those in Sabah and Sarawak, and the response rate for the survey was about 76.5%, a rate comparable to surveys conducted in advanced economies, MCMC said.

Amongst the objectives of the survey were to determine the demographics, trends and patterns of the Internet users, as well as to try to ascertain if subscribers’ were willing to move from dialup to broadband access.

The Government, through the National Broadband Plan (NBP), aims to boost the broadband Internet access penetration rate to about 10% of the population by 2008. The plan, drafted by MCMC in 2003, aims to provide 2.7 million homes in Malaysia with broadband access by 2007.

However, industry observers have noted that while the country’s largest broadband Internet service provider, TM Net Sdn Bhd, has made some commendable attempts to increase its streamyx subscribers, Internet users in the country as a whole still do not see the need to upgrade because there is no compelling reason to do so.

“A few years ago, subscribers who wanted streamyx repeatedly lamented they couldn’t get the service as there was a lack of DSL ports serving certain localities.

“Today we see the reverse happening; despite having enough ports and capacity in urban areas, subscribers are not upgrading to streamyx.

“There seems to be a lack of the ‘pull factor’ – a compelling enough reason for more to jump onto the broadband bandwagon,” said an observer familiar with the matter.

Research firm IDC in April suggested that the Government give the NBP more visibility by promoting it “like a non-smoking campaign,” with regular messages in the media and on billboards.

Its research manager, Lee Huei Min, said broadband services have to evolve from “nice to have” to “must have,” in order for it to be more pervasive.

Koay Hock Eng, MCMC manager for industry research and analysis, said the survey indicated that besides not seeing the need to upgrade, about a fifth of the respondents indicated that they were not aware of the broadband service.

“About 23% of respondents said they were not aware of broadband and its benefits. There was also a small percentage of people interviewed who did not know the difference between broadband access and TM Net's streamyx service,” he said, adding that the two, in this survey, is essentially synonymous.

Koay urged service providers to review their promotional activities and ensure that they run advertisement campaigns that clearly espouse the benefits of broadband access and how it can enhance users’ Internet experience.

He said besides these two key indicators, 14.1% of respondents felt the cost of broadband was too high while 6.2% of the country did not have broadband coverage.

The survey noted that of the 18.6% of users who had intention to migrate to broadband access, 31.5% said they would do so in the next three months, while 14.3% said they would do it in six months.

Surfers’ profile
HUIS 2005 also noted that there was no discernable difference between male and female surfers when it came to Internet use, with 50.2% of men and 49.8% of women using the Web.

A significant finding, said MCMC, was that 18.6% of Internet users were between the ages of 15 and 19, the highest percentage figure in any age group in the survey. The second highest figure was between the ages of 20 and 24 years (17.2%), followed by between 25 and 29 (12.5%).

Forty three per cent of surfers used the Internet for less than four hours, followed by 24.9% who surfed between four and eight hours, and 14.2% for between eight and 15 hours.

A majority of surfers (70.2%) get on to the Internet between 8pm and midnight, while only a small proportion (14.2%) login in between noon and 8pm.

The majority who surfed used e-mail (73.7%); followed by education/research activities (46.8%); finding information about goods and services (40.5%); downloading online newspapers/news/magazines (20.2%); and playing games/downloading software and music (19.9%).

Only 9.3% of Internet users purchased products or services through the Internet during the past three months. Among those who did so, airline tickets were the most popular purchase (43.8%), followed by books (15.6%), and music (6.8%).

The amount spent on these items were small, with 57.7% spending less than RM500; 20.7% between RM500 and RM1,000; and 6.8% between RM1,000 and RM1,500.

The full report can be downloaded at http://www.cmc.gov.my/Admin/WhatIsNe...survey2005.pdf

Source: http://star-techcentral.com/tech/sto...sec=technology

We are all here but do you guys even care?

Did they really do the survey or what? Why no stories about 'ALL STREAMYX USERS' not satisfied with their service one?

[Adrian Wong]

LOL!! They should ask Max and me what we were told when we applied for Streamyx.

[ZuePhok]

"We" are just the minority

is like the 5% of the 7800GTX users

[Adrian Wong]

They should be asking, WTF were you doing, TMNet?!!!!

[ALstonLoong]

so tmnet really sucks on broadband ?for example ?


i think the thing im concerned is ... do we have privacy? because seems like tmnet is monitoring wat we are downloading .....this sucks.

[Adrian Wong]

Originally Posted by ALstonLoong

so tmnet really sucks on broadband ?for example ?


i think the thing im concerned is ... do we have privacy? because seems like tmnet is monitoring wat we are downloading .....this sucks.

Err.. How did you come to that conclusion?

[The_YongGrand]

I had serious trouble when I applied for the Streamyx broadband.

Sometimes my area lost its coverage when I want to apply.

And sometimes it's there.

And sometimes it's NOT there. How annoying.

The worst thing is the customer service. The person kept on diverting calls until one time the whole line was cut or hanged up and I have to call the service again. Ugh.

I begged and pleaded to the Main Port Centre to plug the port in SO I CAN ENJOY STREAMYX!!!!

*Sigh*. I wish this service will extend to everywhere in M'sia.

[Adrian Wong]

Originally Posted by The_YongGrand

I had serious trouble when I applied for the Streamyx broadband.

Sometimes my area lost its coverage when I want to apply.

And sometimes it's there.

And sometimes it's NOT there. How annoying.

The worst thing is the customer service. The person kept on diverting calls until one time the whole line was cut or hanged up and I have to call the service again. Ugh.

I begged and pleaded to the Main Port Centre to plug the port in SO I CAN ENJOY STREAMYX!!!!

*Sigh*. I wish this service will extend to everywhere in M'sia.

Hehe.. I know how you feel.

If you have any political connections, use it. It works. It's Malaysia.

[djspinnet]

Originally Posted by Adrian Wong

Hehe.. I know how you feel.

If you have any political connections, use it. It works. It's Malaysia.

Or get yourself a burly sized foreigner expat friend.

Guaranteed... fixed the next day

[Dashken]

I want to upgrade my line to 1MB for a long time already... but I'm afraid that what if they started to charge but delay the upgrading... What should I do then?