April 17, 2008

3.5G Broadband in Indonesia

Update : After using IM2 for a year (April '08 - '09), I've just switched to a new ISP (netZAP). IM2 proved to be very fast at the beginning, but in recent months, the connection has been slow & particularly the last month (April), I sometimes couldn't even connect! Other people have been experiencing the same thing, and rumour has it that IM2 doesn't have the necessary bandwidth to keep up with the increasing subscribers.

I remember browsing through the comments for “Visit Indonesia Year 2008” teaser ad on YouTube, & reading that some foreigners who saw the ad thought that Indonesia consisted only of rainforests & primitive tribes.

I guess for a person who has no idea of Indonesia, with all the headlines that Indonesia has been in, they would think that this country is a total mess with no modern things at all (Have you seen the ER episode where they compared the hectic situation in the hospital emergency room to Indonesia?)

I was curious about the ad, but couldn’t download it since I was using a 56kbps dial-up modem, it would have taken me hours... But yesterday I just registered to IM2, an Indonesian internet & multimedia service provider, for its 3.5G broadband subscription. They were offering free modem when subscribing to their broadband packages.

I was eyeing on the cheapest package (EcoLite) to use for my PC at home, but it turns out that it can only be used for notebooks & even then, not all notebooks are compatible with the device. I think that they should have put this info on the website. Or maybe they did, using a technical term (I’m not technology savvy), so I didn’t understand it…but still…

I felt mislead when knowing this. In other countries, I could have sued them ;)

Because I was already excited of the idea having broadband internet at home, I eventually chose the next cheapest package. I asked in detail what I should do to get things up & running. This is what the customer service officer said :

- Plug in the modem to your PC. The PC will automatically detect the device as long as you have Windows XP
- Just click “Next…Next….Next” to install
- Click on the internet icon in the software & click "Connect now"

Well, installing the modem turned out to be just that simple. But I couldn’t connect eventhough everything was installed properly & I saw that I got a signal. So…I called the customer hot line & it turns out that for some computers that don’t have an automatic thingy software (he mentioned the name, but I forgot), you still need to manually input a few data (I guess my computer is not up-to-date, just like its owner :P). It was quite a simple thing that you had to do, but I thought that IM2 could’ve just printed the instructions on the manual, rather then letting me waste my money calling them...

Overall though, I was quite satisfied for the first try.
The signal was good (I got HSDPA throughout the 2 hour I was browsing) & therefore I could watched videos on YouTube immediately after I clicked on them.
Not a second delay!

Hm…not too shabby for a developing country…

No comments:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...