Could Be Faster

Finally the Telawi area was blessed with a strong LTE signal on Celcom. But still the speed there was only around 15MBit, lower than advertised. Possibly due to the sheer number of users there.

While waiting for Anita and the boys to join me at the apartment, I decided to find my own dinner. Chawan it was. An easy choice. And I was enjoying the freedom as well as I was there. Dinner and surfing the net, on an evening before a public holiday. Bliss …..

All That for 4G?

When I picked ip the new nano Sim from the Celcom store on Saturday, I was surprised to find out that it didn't enable LTE straight up. It happened automatically on my Maxis account. To activate, you'd have to turn up either at Menara Celcom - which only opened during office hours - or at Bluecube at Sunway Pyramid.

Luckily Sunway Pyramid was only 5 minutes away from my hospital. So, at 10 am on a Sunday morning, I gleefully made my way to the mall.

Yes, it was opened as advertise and I was the first customer. I have my account details, complete with presentation of my MyKad. They did something on the network, asked me to turn my phone off, restart it and walla. I was 4G.

Why can't they just activate it over the phone, or better still one could just apply through the internet via their phone. Imagine one had to waste their time just to turn up at Sunway Pyramid. Not even for a change of SIM. Rediculous! But then again, we were just customers. And the sad thing was, Maxis' network was way faster! Minus the hype. And I didn't even get to meet Usain Bolt!

To My Friend Mr Celcom

After a good year of coaxing, Anita finally agreed to plunge on the iOS route. This followed an incident - an indecent one - with her friends when her phone went dead in the middle of a conversation, and everyone was blaming her trusty old Sony Ericsson. Well, one has to move on with the time.

She agreed to go for an iPhone 4, but only in white. Plus, she has already planned some lavish cover design which would put Paris Holton to shame. During our afternoon out in Pavilion, we dropped by the Celcom Blue Cube outlet there - ironically right opposite a Maxis branch. As we wanted to keep our identical Celcom number, we decided to stay loyal.

It was a Sunday, and only a handful of customers were around, but we still had to wait a good 15 minutes before being served although the sales rep did acknowledge we were there. She went through all the usual shpill about the right package for Anita, and we finally settled form a 32GB white iPhone 4.

Unfortunately, since both Anita's and my numbers were under my name, I had to cancel her numbers account and reregister under her name. Despite coming over to a Celcom branch, the process would take place after 24 hours ad we can only pick up the iPhone the next day. When asked about the logic behind it, there were just no explanation. "That's the rule!". My sore throat prevented me from going further, both in terms of conversation or walking quarter of a mile to Low Yat.

I did not mind the extra time waiting, but being a busy man, I really can't afford another round trip just to pick the phone up the next day. While can't they just bloody remote activate the damn phone. After all, if you pick one up at an Apple Store in the US, the come with an AT&T sim, which would can later be activated on your Mac.

Well, Mr Celcom, I'm sure you don't read complaints, but I think the only way to discourage the linters from buying illegal units would be to trump them at least in terms of customer service. If you can't even offer that, than the monopoly that these telco has certainly is an unhealthy one. It just curtailed retail progress, and made it blinding obvious that all they cared about was the bottom line. It was all down to money. A single subscriber pulling out won't bring them out of business ...... Anita still insist on getting the iPhone 'legally', so I had to just swallow it.