It’s quite nice to see the competition between 2 companies that provide the same service where one slashing another and at the end, the user gets the benefit. I’m talking about the war of providing 3G broadband by telcos in Malaysia.

I used to pay RM138 monthly for my 3G broadband last time, where I bound to 18 months contract, and RM350 penalty of breaching the contract.

Now 3G broadband seems to be so competitive, which makes me want to get 3G broadband as my secondary internet source whenever I’m on the move. I use Celcom prepaid 3G broadband before. It looks like a good thing at a start where you don’t have to worry about monthly fees, but in the long run, you have to keep the SIM card active by topping up, or the SIM card is terminated. And also, the SIM card that I use for prepaid 3G internet has been terminated already because I didn’t reload any credit to it for 2 months.

So, I’m looking something that is very basic, since I usually just doing internet surfing while on the move, and I also want to have 3G modem providing the one that I have is too big and ugly and is not considered cool anymore (more about my bulky 3G modem in this blog entry). Below is the current offer of the most basic 3G broadband package

Price	RM48/month	RM48/month
Speed	Capped at 384Kbps	No cap up to 7.2Mbps
Volume quota	1 GB monthly	1.5 GB monthly
Modem price	Free	RM100. The modem is free if opting for 6 months contract
Other charges	RM100 activation fee	RM100 activation fee
Other T&C	RM38/month for the first 3 months. RM48/month afterward	RM100 penalty is charged if the contract is breached. If the modem is returned to Maxis Centre, the RM100 penalty is waived

The Maxis package does catch my eye more, just because that the speed is uncapped. Even though I have to pay RM100 for the modem, but I do think that I will be using the 3G internet more than 6 months, so I can opt for 6 months contract and get the free modem.

More about other packages that Celcom and Maxis has to offer from the leaflets that I scan below.

So I pay a visit to Maxis Center at Gardens during lunch hour break today, and getting myself Maxis Broadband again.

I just love the USB stick modem. Quite small to be carried anywhere. I’m getting the E1552 modem instead, with the max speed of 3.6Mbps. There’s also E1762 model with the max speed of 7.2Mbpps, but I don’t think that I need that much speed even Maxis does provide that speed in certain area of Klang Valley.

This is the new modem compared to my old E220 modem (minus the USB cable which is the reason why this modem is no longer cool. LOL).

And also, using this modem on my newly bought D-Link DIR-412 Mobile Wireless Router looks so cool now. The black and white combination does look good.

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Maxis has a new packages line up for its Mobile Internet.

From the list of packages above, there’s no more RM99 unlimited use mobile internet. The same with the data package that comes with iPhone, when you use more that the allowed quota, the additional usages will be charged RM0.0005/KB. So let say you reached the monthly quota, and you download an MP3 of the size 5MB.

5MB = 5000KB
5000 x RM0.0005 = RM2.50

That’s expensive. And the very famous question that I keep receiving from others is, how to check how much bandwidth that I have used. The answer is very simple. You can’t check. Maxis doesn’t have that facility. Maxis is doing daylight robbery by charging the excess usage by not providing any utility for the customers to check their bandwidth consumptions.

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