Talking

Hearing of buying new trains from Transport Department as well as KTM Berhad,finally we could see the true face of the new trains.

The new train is made by Hyundai Rotem  with Mitsubishi design and will be used on Kuala Lumpur-Ipoh route of ETS(Express Train Service) initially.The designed max. speed of this train is 160km/hour,however,it will only be running at 140km/hour maximum in the current route,spending 1 hour and 55 minutes for the single trip.

The new train is a new hope for a lot of people.At least we now know that KTM is doing something improving their services.I just wonder know when they want to increase more trains for existing commuter services and when the ETS will be extended to Penang/Singapore.

I think for all I mentioned,I still need to wait for longer time.

When I suffer the slow international link issues,I hear a lot of good news from other countries.In Singapore,the very neighbour country of Malaysia,it has estimated the Next Generation Network on the board and planned to release it on April 2010.Starhub won the contract and will be in charge of this new service.

The tariff for the new network has open to public.

Wholesale prices are set at SGD 21 per month for a 100 Mbps residential connection and SGD 121 for 1 Gbps, while non-residential premises, such as offices and schools, will have a wholesale price of SGD 75 for 100 Mbps and SGD 860 for 1 Gbps.

In order to clearly get the comparisons with Malaysian Broadband,I made a graph here:

We could find that we subscribe Streamyx 4Mbps packages where the speed is 25 times lower than Singapore NGN-100Mbps plan,but we have to pay the price 3 times higher than Singaporean one.

Just unfair!

Singapore mobile operator-Starhub will launch 21Mbps HSPA+ network by the end of April.Following that schedule,it is the second operator who uses HSPA+ technology in Asia and Australian operator Telstra is the first one where it launched the service in last month.

I have to differentiate HSPDA,HSPA and HSPA+ clearly here.Maxis and Celcom,who are the two largest mobile broadband operators in Malaysia,are using HSDPA technology(if not wrongly informed) that works up to 14Mbit/s in the downlink and only 384Kbit/s in the uplink.However,the Malaysian latest mobile broadband operator-Digi is using HSPA which improves the end-user experience by having peak data rates up to 14 Mbit/s in the downlink and 5.8 Mbit/s in the uplink.Thus,we could say that Digi has the advantages to beat with two other large competitors in the markets.

Starhub’s HSPA+,in the meanwhile,also calls as Evolved HSPA.It even could provide up to 42 Mbit/s on the downlink and 22 Mbit/s on the uplink.The speed is so amazing that it’s able to fight with a few of wired broadband now.It brings the average broadband speed in Singapore into another high and pushes the whole industry moving towards a better position.

HSBB in Malaysia is a desirable project,however I feel there is too few motivations,perhaps competitions.I wish these mobile operators could join the battle to give consumers more options and encourage the sector growing much healthier than what we see now.Singapore is a very good example and I think Malaysia could learn a lot from there.

I wonder when I could enjoy HSPA+ or equivalent service in Malaysia.Frankly speaking,I want it to be tomorrow!

The deputy Prime Minister and finance minister Dato’ Najib announced a mini budget in this afternoon totally amounted RM60 billion(USD16.1 billion) for 2009 and 2010 to boost the local economy.

4 key areas are touched in the budget:

However,after reviewing the whole details of the budget,I feel that it will not help the economy as much as we hope.The budget seems to be quite rough and thus,I think the result will be just-so-so for each field.

Besides,for individuals,it’s not involving much either.After all,people in the country will not entitle any benefits with cash and how could we see more spending on consumption within the country?

The size of this mini budget is not enough as it’s RM30billion annually,much less than the similar one for 2009 in Singapore which is up to RM41 billion(SGD20.5 billion).It shows that the management is still thinking to follow a conservative policy in this very special time.Well,R-E-G-R-E-T is the only word I’d say now.

Good luck,Malaysia!

More details in TheStar

My darling went for restyle her hair during the daytime.Thus we went to Clarke Quay after that.With falling of dark night,more and more people went there drinking and chitchatting.The colourful river shore was making thousands of reason let us stay.

We snapped here and there and this was the last night in Singapore.

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