Managed by Celcom...

Lately I had been working from home with my netbook... technically mine but not minelah. You know what I mean. I was doing this as it was more convenient and definitely cheaper. Wi-fi is available at KFC, Kenny Roger's, McDonald's and of course Starbucks. I think Big Apple has wi-fi too. My choice of venue would be Starbuck's and there are two in Langkawi. One at the jetty and the other at the airport. Either Starbucks would require parking fees. The airport at RM2 flat and the jetty at RM1 per hour. The airport is about 17kms from where I live so that is about 2 liters of petrol with my motorboat. So, naturally the jetty is cheaper and nearer. A Grande Caramel Macchiato is at RM13.00. All in, we're talking no less than RM15.00 a day just for me to use the net.

I have an UNLIMITED data package with Celcom... or so it seems. I was enjoying using my phone as a modem. The speeds were pretty impressive. I am guessing that there are less users here as opposed to being in KL so I get most of the bandwidth. As you can see from the screenshots below I could hit over 200KBs... that is pretty impressive ok?

A couple of weeks back I decided to download a trial version of Photoshope Elements 8 so I could process my pictures. The file was just over 1GB in size. Even with a download manager, it failed once and on the second time the file was corrupted. In only worked on the third time...

When I was halfway through my 3rd attempt at downloading the PSE8, I received an sms from Celcom stating that was approaching my limit... huh? What limit? The message read... A friendly reminder, your data usage is reaching the allocated 5GB/mth (Celcom Broadband Policy). Pls reduce your usage to avoid having your speeds managed. Hmmm... they have a fair usage policy it seems. Then a few days later came the next sms... Dear Sir/Ms, you have exceeded the 5GB/mth usage as per Celcom Broadband policy. We reserve the right to control yr broadband speed when deemed necessary.Thk U.

And guess what? They did just that... they managed my speed down to about 12KB/s. Things started to crawl... and I was starting to crawl up the wall... mana boleh keje ini macam?

After a few days I called Celcom and asked how long would the throttle period (managed download speed)  last for and what could I do to get 'unmanaged'? The answer.... it will last through you billing date and will be reset after that and pay RM5 per additional 1GB or RM20 for 5GB... my billing date was the 18th...of course I topped up... 1GB cukup lah...