Old problem....

An old problem has reared its ugly head again.

I was talking to fellow Zoomers about 2 weeks ago on the overall performance of Zoom! Broadband, the mobile broadband service brought by B-Mobile. At that time, we were pretty happy with the service; good download speed, consistent reception and minimal interruptions. We all thought that B-Mobile had finally got it right. I was even thinking of writing a blog post to sing my praises for Zoom!.

Well, perhaps we spoke a bit too soon. Not too long after that conversation, we all noticed a sudden change in its performance. I noticed that I lost the reception a lot and the connection got dropped. Download speed also suffered. Now, to download a 500MB file, it would take me almost 2 days, where previously it would take an overnight effort. My torrent client registered a pitiful download speed average of less than 10kBps (previously it could go higher than 70kBps).

What have happened? Could it be that there are now so many Zoom! subscribers that they are now overcrowding the so-called information superhighway?

I also remembered that following DST's Go! Broadband launch with its 7.2Mbps modem, B-Mobile eventually upgraded its modem from the one that could download at 3.6Mbps to something similar to Go! Broadband modem. The newer modems were offered to new subscribers to the Zoom! Broadband. I inquired during one of the roadshows and was convinced that the earlier subscribers would be upgraded too at no extra cost.

A few months passed by and no news were heard about the free modem upgrade. I eventually gave the Customers Hotline a call. I was quite disappointed to hear that there was never any plan to upgrade the modems to the newer ones, leaving the earlier subscribers, like myself, to remain using the older modem. Hmmm.... So much about customer loyalty. I'd think that since we were the ones who supported them from the beginning would be treated equally to the ones who signed up later.

On top of that, I was quite miffed when I was told that the network download speed has been upgraded to 7.2Mbps! That would mean, if it was really the case, then we would have lost out much more than we expected!

But then again, it is quite a rare occurence to see the download speed to be 1.0Mbps or more. As a friend put it, if they could not even fulfil the earlier obligation of 3.6Mbps, what was the point of being upgraded to a modem and a network with download speed of 7.2Mbps..... Well, that was one fair comment.

A snapshot of my downloads..... and the downloads have been taking place for the past 2 days!