The Interminable & Indeterminable Talkin’ Telekom Blues

Just got back online after another 4-day breakdown in phone & internet services. This is a tribute of sorts to Telekom Malaysia...

My childhood memories of Telekom go back to a time when it was still called Pejabat Telecoms and served the public as a government department. Those were days when you would find a big room full of telephone operators tasked with connecting one customer to another. When you picked up the phone, you would hear a sweet female voice saying: “Telecoms. Can I help you?” You would tell her the number or give her a name and address – and she would say, “Just a minute!” before connecting you. At night, you'd hear a male voice.

Later telephones came with a built-in dialer so you could make local calls directly without going through the operator – but for overseas calls you had to dial 108 and the operator would call you back when the connection was made. I didn’t have any personal dealings with Telecoms as a kid – although I met a telephone operator at a party and enjoyed a bit of harmless adolescent flirting whenever she happened to pick up my call.

My negative perception of Telekom Malaysia began in the mid-1970s when I first applied for a telephone account under my own name. I was told I would have to wait for lines to become available in my area. I wasn’t living in Puchong or Nibong Tebal at the time – I was smack in KL’s diplomatic enclave - 7 Pesiaran Ampang Hilir, just across the road from the Swiss ambassador’s residence.  I couldn’t believe there was a shortage of telephone lines in this prestigious area.

So I wrote a long but courteous and helpful letter to the Minister of Postal Services and Telecommunications. Dead silence from yet another rude and unresponsive public servant. In his shoes, I would have invited the writer of that letter to a personal meeting – and offered him a contract to help upgrade telephone services and improve the public image of Telekom Malaysia.

At the time I had just taken over as sole proprietor of a partnership company I had started in 1974 with two other friends. A phone was crucial to working from home. Without this basic lifeline I was forced to depend on public phones and messages left at a friend’s office. After more than a year struggling to keep the company going, I was offered a full-time job in a big advertising agency and decided to accept. Fortunately I had only one employee and he was very understanding when I explained that I was folding up the company.

The phone line was finally installed, nearly two years later, when I no longer urgently needed it.

Recently I attempted to work out an approximation of how much I have paid since 1976 for the use of the basic telephone – a communication tool that has been around since 1876, though telecommunications only became a viable industry many decades later. It’s hard to get a precise figure because the fluctuations over the years have been dramatic (ranging from an average of, say, M$36 a month in the 1970s to as much M$800 in the 1980s when I acquired a taste for long-distance girlfriends). A conservative estimate would be something like RM60,000 – but it wouldn’t surprise me if the actual amount topped RM100,000.

In May 2002 I optimistically applied for a land line when I relocated from Kuala Kubu Bharu town to Pertak Village about 8 miles up the Fraser’s Hill road. I was told no lines were available – the area was too remote. I wrote several letters to editors of various newspapers lamenting the poor attitude of Telekom Malaysia. None ever saw the light of day.

When Mahathir privatized the phone company in 1987, Syarikat Telekom Malaysia Berhad inherited the existing infrastructure along with all existing customers, which must have numbered in the millions. The company, even though now a profit-making enterprise, had a moral obligation to provide telecommunication services to all Malaysians, regardless of their location.

If Telekom Malaysia had been farsighted, it would have invested at the outset in wireless telephony using communications satellites. Instead, the company opted for optic fiber cables, which they installed piecemeal – so that the high-end urban customers were able to enjoy broadband services while low-end rural users had to settle for the existing copper cable network. The result was a haphazard, piecemeal telecommunications system fraught with maintenance problems, connectivity issues, and extremely patchy service.

Three years after I applied for a phone line I noticed that telephone posts were being erected along the Fraser’s Hill road from KKB. Eventually the posts reached the entrance of Pertak Village – and then stopped. Ever hopeful, I enquired at the KKB Kedai Telekom about the prospects of finally getting some service. I was informed that there was no plan to pull a line into the village just to serve one customer.

I pointed out that the telephone posts had reached right to the entrance of the village - and my house was only a few hundred yards away. “Oh, that’s for the exclusive use of the Sultan,” I was told. I was incredulous. TM had just spent close to a million ringgit setting up an optic fiber line to the Sultan’s weekend lodge and they weren’t bothered to satisfy one paying customer by extending the line a short distance further…

Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah

This prompted a letter to the Sultan of Selangor, c.c.’ed to a couple of dailies and the CEO of TM, pointing out the absurdity of the situation: TM had bent over backwards to provide a broadband connection to someone who only required it on very rare occasions and probably never had to pay his phone bills - yet they were unable or unwilling to extend the service to a regular paying customer. The silence was deafening.

For three years I had been going to a local internet café on a daily basis, spending RM4-10 each time, and on top of that I had to fork out an additional RM60 a month on prepaid mobile top-ups. One afternoon at the internet café, somebody approached me, requesting that I park my van a little further down the road (it was right in front of the MIC branch office).

G. Palanivel

“What’s going on, why are so many people coming to the MIC office?” I asked. I was told the deputy minister of rural development, Dato’ G. Palanivel, was arriving soon to meet his constituents. When I finished my session, I noticed there were still a lot of people milling around the MIC office. On impulse I went up the stairs and asked to talk to Palanivel.

I explained my telephone woes to the deputy minister, who responded by asking me to exchange mobile numbers with Mr Rama, his personal assistant, who was tasked with following up on our brief discussion. To my utter surprise I got a call from Rama the very next day, informing me that his boss would be in the vicinity the following Monday and asking if I would be at home because the Dato’ was thinking of dropping by. “Most certainly I will be waiting for him,” I said.

I had anticipated that Palanivel would arrive with a small entourage – but I burst out laughing when I saw that he was accompanied by a large convoy of vehicles, including a Bernama TV crew and a clutch of reporters from the vernacular press. Also in spritely attendance were officials from the Rawang branch of Telekom Malaysia, a couple of JKR engineers, and two senior JHEOA officers.

“Ah, Dato’ Palanivel, how sweet of you to come all the way here,” I smiled. “Sorry, we have a very tiny veranda and can’t accommodate everybody.” So, while Palanivel and the media corps crowded round the table on my veranda for an impromptu press conference, the rest of his entourage milled about the village. With cameras flashing and rolling, Palanivel declared that it was unacceptable that there wasn’t even a public telephone in Pertak Village for use in case of emergencies. He announced that within two weeks he wanted a couple of solar-powered payphones installed – one near the sundry shop and the other in front of the headman’s house. After that, he continued, we will see to it that a proper line is pulled in.

True to his word, the solar-powered payphones were installed within a couple of weeks. It took several more months for the copper line to be set up. When a TM technical crew arrived shortly afterwards to install my land line, they sheepishly told me the copper line was two poles short of my house, and that it would take another few weeks before they could extend it.

And so it passed that after a 3-year wait, I finally got the land line I had applied for in May 2002. However, I had to wait another 18 months before my Streamyx account was activated at the end of July 2006.

For his prompt action in facilitating my phone line, I will always have a kind word for G. Palanivel. He struck me as a savvy, down-to-earth politician, who immediately saw my complaint as an opportunity to gain a bit of PR mileage for himself. The Star carried the story the next day and I believe the press conference with this pro-active deputy minister of rural development was televised nationwide too.

So this is how things work in Bolehland. You have to rope in at least a deputy minister just to obtain something as routine as a phone line. Why didn’t it occur to TM to do what they are supposed to do? Because they didn’t see me as a VIP. A totally unhealthy attitude, I must say, since most VIPs don’t even pay their own phone bills.

However, this is not the end of the story. It appears there will never be an end to my telephone woes so long as TM exists as a privatized monopoly and doesn’t give a damn for any customer who doesn’t qualify as a “VIP.”

When TM set up the Sultan’s optic fiber line, they decided to install the terminal right within the compound of his weekend lodge. The outcome was that every time there is a breakdown, the technicians must first obtain the keys from the Sultan’s security guards before they can access the terminal. And since the Sultan is so rarely present at his RM6 million lakeside retreat, the guards aren’t always where they are supposed to be. Sometimes it takes up to 3 or 4 days before the TM repair team can gain access to do their work.

I experience a service breakdown approximately once every two or three months. What ought to be a 30-minute routine repair job usually takes at least a week to get done. And if sections of the optic fiber cable happen to be missing (due to vandalism or theft) I end up having to wait two weeks or more for the service to be restored.

I don’t blame the TM personnel on the ground for their endemic lack of motivation. Most of them have the attitude of civil servants because they joined TM before it became privatized and many are close to retirement. The younger ones usually don’t stay very long with TM because the top-heavy management is too steeped in the feudal ethos to notice their individual abilities and reward them appropriately.

Another stumbling block issues from the near-sighted manner in which TM resolved the problem of overstaffing during the privatization process. To streamline the workforce, TM must have offered an early retirement option to the veterans, while the younger staff were encouraged to start their own businesses as suppliers and given exclusive contracts with TM to install and maintain the system. With no real competition, these small-scale suppliers tend to acquire a rent-seeker mentality and become complacent.

Illustration by Stephen Nix

And the red tape doesn’t help either. The obsession with centralized control creates a 9-headed hydra that may appear fearsome but is in fact a clumsy, inefficient monster that easily loses its sense of direction. Whenever a breakdown occurs, the local technical team often has to call in contractors from Rawang who, in turn, have to order replacement parts from Shah Alam - so repair jobs that ought to be accomplished in a couple of hours can take up to two weeks.

A sorry state of affairs, unavoidable when you have an absolute monopoly and analog minds operating in a digital universe.

It would be tremendous challenge indeed to be assigned the Herculean task of sorting out Telekom Malaysia. Much easier, I believe, to open the market up to innovation. Let other players in. TM could be reinstated as a public sector agency responsible for ensuring maximum access to telecommunications at minimum cost; this way it can stop focusing on profits and be content to generate enough revenue to maintain itself. As a government department TM could play a coordinating role to ensure compatibility and to ensure that vital infrastructures are efficiently maintained.

There can be a happy ending yet to the sad saga of Telekom Malaysia.

13 DAYS AND COUNTING...

Today is the 13th I have had no internet access. First TM said it was a broken power generator feeding the exchange. That took about a week to fix. Then I got a call from TM accounts reminding me I hadn't paid last month's bill... I was HAPPY to hear from TM because it meant my phone was working again.

But still no internet. How come? "Sorry, our technicians discovered thieves had stolen some lengths of optic fiber cable." This is the THIRD time this has happened. The first two times I got service back after 10 days or so. This time? Already 13 days... one would think people in the telco business would learn from past mistakes, keep certain spare parts handy, so that downtime can be kept to a minimum.

Guess not in post-Mahathirite Bolehland!

As for the cable thieves... what can we say when those in the highest office are even BIGGER THIEVES???

Anyway, it's a great excuse to take a break from blogging. Meanwhile, I salute RPK for continuing to soldier on so magnificently. The Evil Empire is DEFINITELY crumbling!

NO THANKS TO TELEKOM MALAYSIA

This notice is being posted from a cybercafe because Telekom Malaysia continues to be Tak Malu about being the most retarded telco in the known universe.

On 19 July I lost my broadband connection but I was traveling south the next day anyway, so it was no big problem. At least the phone line was active and I was able to file a report with TM Customer Care.

I returned on 23 July to find that not only was there no internet service... the phone line was down too! And, apparently, this occurred AFTER a TM technical crew from Rawang was despatched to "fix" the problem.

Boleh pakai tak?

Today is the 9th day since I filed the report.

Malaysia masih BOLEH ke?

Meanwhile, a whole load of other crap has been happening. I just heard a few days ago that Jibby the Hutt wants to privatize the useless and corrupt Jabatan Hal Ehwal Orang Asli and turn it into a corporate entity through which Umno cronies can gain access to the Orang Asli land bank in Peninsular Malaysia. Fabulous inspiration, don't you think? I'm thinking seriously of applying for the position of deputy CEO of the JHEOA. Do you think I stand a chance of getting the job? Fortunately, I believe Umno will go into meltdown mode before something as absurd as that can happen.

Hang in there, folks.... fasten your seatbelts and enjoy the helterskelter ride ahead!!!

NAMEWEE, DEDICATE A VIDEO TO TM!

Investors put off by Malaysia’s high-cost, low-speed broadband

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 26 — Consumers in Malaysia pay some of the highest prices for broadband in the region, one major reason being the monopoly which state-owned Telekom Malaysia (TM) holds on submarine cable landing rights, a senior executive at a multinational company has asserted.

There is no shortage of gateway service providers seeking landing rights because of the pent-up demand for quality bandwidth, but the government must deregulate or liberalise gateways in order to improve competitiveness by providing larger broadband at lower costs, said Ryaz Patel, Intel Electronics country manager for Malaysia and Brunei.

Patel’s comments that the lacklustre quality and high cost of broadband is hurting the country’s knowledge aspirations come on the heels of warnings by Australian businesses that slow Internet speeds were putting them off investing in Malaysia.

Malaysia Australia Business Council vice-chairman Michael Halpin said large technical documents from Australia had difficulty getting sent over because of the poor quality broadband.

“Australian and American investors see this as a nuisance and an impediment to them to do business successfully here,” he said.


In a press briefing on Intel’s roadmap for 2010, Patel observed Malaysian consumers pay significantly more for broadband, but even to buy broadband wholesale as a service provider was ‘“frighteningly expensive” compared to its neighbours.

His comparison of regional costs showed Malaysian broadband offers some of the lowest speeds in the region, but at the highest costs.

[Excerpted from Business Times Singapore. Read the whole damning report here.]

And when you're done with TM, Namewee, let's go for BN!

Worst-Run Telco in the Known Universe!

Every time there's a problem with my phone line or Streamyx connection, I find myself sucked into the Twilight Zone. That's what dealing with Telekom Malaysia feels like.

Kafkaesque is the word that immediately springs to mind whenever I have had any dealings with this dinosaur-like organization which is undoubtedly a top contender for Worst-Run Telephone Company in the Known Universe. On Thursday afternoon my Streamyx connection went down and now, more than 72 hours later and half-a-dozen time-wasting, blood-pressure-raising calls to the human robots at TM Customer Support, it mysteriously remains down. I've been forced to post this using my Jaring dial-up account.

Why should this be so? In the first place telecommunications is no longer a luxury - it's an essential part of our everyday lives - and therefore ought to be ranked together with public utilities like water and power supply as basic infrastructure necessary to the normal functioning of a nation. None of these vital services should ever be placed in the hands of uncrupulous profit-driven businessmen.


Instead the government would do well to declare water, power, telecommunications, education, housing, medical care and food production as essential community services that are every citizen's birthright. In effect, they must be managed as bona fide public services, not as opportunities for Umno cronies to make a huge killing. As things stand, the mounting anger and frustration the public feels towards Umno/BN is being projected against damnable monopolies like TM and TNB - and rightly so, as these monolithic (and embarrassingly monoethnic) organizations wouldn't survive 6 months without Umno protection.

Tenders for the operation and maintenance of these essential services can be opened up to private enterprise at a stipulated management fee paid for out of the public purse. The contract must be renewed every year and if the company is found to be underperforming and there are too many complaints, it will lose the contract. Quality control has to be absolutely stringent.

Management objectives have to be focused on delivering optimal service at minimal operational cost, without incurring financial loss. Profitability will not be a motivating factor as it is counterproductive and myopic to turn essential services into profit-driven enterprises.

Instead, those who wish to be in profit-driven businesses ought to become producers of wealth in the form of intellectual property and creative assets. In other words, the production of original artefacts - whether in the form of music, movies, artwork, software, or new inventions - will be the only legitimate means of earning unlimited profits and general applause.

Extracting unlimited profit from essential services invariably leads to massive inefficiency and results in our being forced to suffer substandard services, generation after generation. These are the unmistakable hallmarks of retarded economies - notwithstanding the grandiloquent architectural display of the purely superficial trappings of "success."

This is something I would like the new Pakatan Rakyat government to study in depth even before it takes over the reins of power from Umno/BN. Gigantic monopolies which began during the Mahathir era (like TNB, TM and Syabas) created through crony capitalism and unwholesome privatization must be dismantled and the field opened to new players with the wherewithal to deliver on promises.

I survived a direct hit but not my phone line...

Shortly after 8pm on May 14th a thunderstorm erupted in full fury. Minutes later the phone rang and I picked it up. It was an old friend who needed a bit of solace. Five minutes into our conversation there was an explosion in my ear and the receiver flew out of my hand.

Lightning strike! Damn... the land line was down... and every time something like this happens I experience the evils of hegemony and monopoly - political as well as economic - impinging on my personal reality. If there's anything I've learned from this electrifying incident - NEVER, NEVER USE THE PHONE DURING A VIOLENT THUNDERSTORM!

Okay... so I'm offline for as long as it takes Telekom Malaysia to fix the problem. One would think, with telephony having been around for 130 years routine breakdowns can be sorted out within a few hours. Not in Bolehland where Telekom Malaysia has had an absolute monopoly on land lines from the very start - and with Mahathir privatizing all essential services by handing them on a golden platter to Umno cronies - the national telephone company is about as customer-friendly and service-oriented as the BN administration.

I won't bore you with the details. Let's just say that 50 hours after I got a friend to lodge a breakdown report, nothing has been done - although I did get a call from a TM technician informing me that lightning had struck the communications card at the nearest switchpoint, and that he would apply for a replacement.

Apply for a replacement: that means informing the outsourced spare parts agent in Rawang who will then issue a request for a new card from their Shah Alam warehouse. Which could take several days, going by past experience.

Great! I'm suitably impressed. Anyway... this is essentially to inform you, dear Magick River blog reader, that I'll be taking an enforced vacation from blogging till my land line is fixed.

Screw Telekom Malaysia. May TM go down with Umno and the S.S. Barisan Nasional... the sooner the better!

Are We A Nation of Thieves?

A few hours after I paid my June phone bill online, my land line went dead. It must have been in the wee hours of July 5th, a Saturday. A couple of friends were kind enough to lodge a 100 report on my behalf and I called Hamdan, my Telekom contact in Kuala Kubu Bharu, who said a technical team from Rawang would be sent up to sort out the problem on Sunday. So I had to monitor the Kelana Jaya Stadium Protes Event from a cybercafe in KKB. Sunday came and went. Still no phone service! I called up Hamdan again and he said the Rawang crew had inspected the equipment and everything was working fine. So how come I still had no service? Hamdan went up to take a look and called me with the bad news: "Thieves have stolen a section of the cable near the bridge!" This is the third time this has happened. The first couple of times it took nearly two weeks to get my land line up again - because right after one section of cable was replaced, the same gang struck again and stole another cable section! To make matters worse, the Telekom techies used the wrong type of cable (one that didn't support Streamyx) and so they had to do the job all over again. Each time this sort of breakdown happens, I add another entry to Mahathir's long list of crimes against Malaysians.

Why Mahathir? He's the Bloody Nincompoop who privatized (read, piratized) our essential telephony, electricity, water, and train services by handing them on a silver platter to his Umno cronies who swiftly proceeded to make them even more inefficient - and, in the case of Telekom, the privatization exercise included the creation of a whole slew of private limited Bumi companies owned and operated by former Telekom employees who were given exclusive contracts to supply components, install wiring, and undertake cable replacement. That in itself need not be a problem. However, these crony companies have a very different attitude to service than your typical Chinaman run auto workshop. If your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, chances are you'll be rescued by a roadside workshop who will tell you in 15 minutes what part needs replacing and then proceed to phone a parts supplier in the nearest town. Within an hour a guy on motorbike will arrive with the required part and within another 30 minutes your car will be on the move again. Now, if only Telekom Malaysia and its associated suppliers had this sort of work ethic!

Instead, the technical team from Rawang that supposedly checked the equipment on Sunday saw that the relay switches were functioning fine and didn't even bother making a test call on the line. Then they would have known it was dead and perhaps would have discovered that a cable section was missing. Instead they turned around and went home, believing their job was done. So on Monday did they get the problem fixed? Of course not! What they did was send a team out to Shah Alam to obtain the replacement cable from their store. That's right, that took an entire day to accomplish. Hopefully, today, they will manage to get the cable replaced and my phone line will be working again. But with Telekom Malaysia on the job, one can never assume anything. Betul TM = Tak Malu. It must be obvious to anyone with half a brain that in Malaysia mono-ethnic companies simply don't work - especially if they're in high-pressure businesses like airlines, commuter train and telco services.

Why is the crime rate so high in Malaysia? Just look at our so-called leaders in the Barisan Nasional. All they have done in the last 25 years is steal from the Rakyat - whether it's Petronas revenues or submarine deals or even Chinese New Year decorations, they grab whatever they can any chance they get. Right after the March 8th election results came in, Umno stste governments began looting their offices of computers, printers, fax machines, even furniture - while furiously shredding whatever evidence might incriminate them. Even their wives quickly stole state money intended for charities. Have the police been around to investigate these Umno wives? Crime has become part of the national culture! Now, no thanks to Najib, murder may become the Malaysian way to cover up corrupt deals and politically embarrassing liaisons. Am I being unfair to prejudge the man? Hey, just read those chubby pink lips!

(Photo courtesy of Tian Chua)

BACK ONLINE AT LAST!

Since the afternoon of January 15th I've had no Streamyx access. Service was restored around 1 p.m. on January 21st. That's one whole week and probably a dozen phonecalls to TMNet Customer Care. Impressive.... NOT!

All systems can and occasionally do break down. However, when it comes to essential services like telecommunications, electricity and water, prolonged downtime causes unquantifiable losses and that's why a turnaround time of 24 hours must be the maximum acceptable limit. Beyond that the companies responsible need to be made financially accountable. That should speed up the maintenance and repair department a little - when their annual bonuses are on the line.

To make matters worse, whenever you call TMNet Customer Care, they invariably put you on hold for several minutes during which you're blasted with idiotic ads for TMNet ("Dedicated to bringing you the best in internet and multimedia services" - my foot!). Talk about rubbing salt into the wound...

So who's responsible for making something as vital to modern life as telecommunications a privatized monopoly business? And not just a privatized monopoly - but an almost entirely monoethnic one to boot?

Saw a great T-shirt on sale at Central Market recently. It features a bold TM logo underscored by the tagline: TAK MALU ("No Shame" in Malay). Come to think of it, TM could also stand for Tun Mahathir - the Supermamak who gave Malaysia privatized electricity, water, telephone, and medical services!

BAH! (I wanted to say NIAMAH! but Patrick Teoh has taken out a patent on that one).