Upgraded from TMNet Streamyx to TM UniFi

Last February 2011, 2 TM UniFi agent came to my house claiming that my area is within UniFi coverage. I checked on UniFi's website earlier but my house address was no where to be found. Since the guy said that registration and the even the installation is free, I then agreed to sign up. 5 months later, after I signed up again online and confirmed that my house address was listed, I received an e-mail that my order was approved and the installation will be done in July 2011. Apparently, TM UniFi's personnel called me up and inform me of an earlier installation date and I happily agreed to it.

Unfortunately, they broke their promise and didn't show up on the date. I e-mailed them back and complain about it and received a reply from their customer support. The installation date was pushed to the following week. Here's how the installation work was done:



There were 2 vans arrived at my house, one contractor is for the outdoor installation and the other is responsible for the indoor installation. Altogether there were 5 people.



I admired this guy who engaged me as the customer and did most of the work compared the other guys. Not only did he brought the barrel of fiber optics cable to the telekom pole, he drilled a hole in my living room.



He then drilled my kitchen wall to insert the fibre optic cables from the outside.



He pulled the fiber optic cables were pulled into my house living room.



The fiber optics cable barrel.



My cracked kitchen wall caused by the drilling. One of the contractor then masked the cracked wall with white plaster.



The guy then sets up the UniFi equipments in my living room.



He and another guys working on the UniFi's connectivity.



My neighbourhood UniFi box connector. In some places, the UniFi connectivity is located underground.



My house TM UniFi equipment up and running.

The next step after installing UniFi is to terminate the TM Net Streamyx and telephone line. There were several issues I've encountered after the installation:

1. I tried requesting for my house number to remain the same. Unfortunately the TM Point staff told me that I can't have my old phone number to be replaced with the new UniFi telephone number. So there goes my old house number after using it for 14 years.


2. The TM powered wireless router administration page is very opened. Even though I've disabled the remote access to the router, until now I can't seem to change the password (current password is just blank).


3. I spent 2 days configuring the TM powered wireless router to work on my laptop. Only my laptop couldn't connect to the WiFi, the rest of laptop, PC and mobile devices in my house could connect to the internet without any problem. I tried configured everything I know on my laptop, installed and uninstalled several drivers and software but nothing seems to work. In the end, I hooked up my old wireless router back and my laptop automatically connects to the internet.


4. After consuming gigabytes of data (I am a heavy downloader once in a while), I think one the UniFi devices crashed and both the HyppTV and the internet is not available anymore. This had occur twice already. The solution is to reset the whole boxes (Consist of the UniFi modem, Wireless router and HypTV box; Switch off for a few seconds and switch back on after that) and the UniFi services will be back to normal. Don't bother tinkering into the admin page or call the customer service unless if you really need to.

If you want to read a full detail story of what happened before the installation, you can read it on my Malay blog here, that is if you can understand Malay language.

Overall, I am satisfied with TM UniFi services. There are moments when the internet line was really slow, I guess not all of the servers can cater for the high speed connection. The only significant improvement I've noticed is when watching YouTube where you don't have to wait for the buffering video anymore. The HyppTV/IPTV is crystal clear and at the moment I'm enjoying all of the HyppTV channel free for a month (1-31 August 2011). That's all for now. Do leave a comment if you would like to ask me anything.

Cheers.

TM Net Internet Streamyx Downgrade

On the 29th September 2010, after much thought and consideration, my family made a decision to downgrade the current package of Streamyx internet. This is to reduce our monthly payment for TM services that we are paying. At the moment we are paying RM149.40 for a rarely used telephone line with 1MBps Streamyx Internet line. The internet line is the busiest because my family has 4 computers connecting using WiFi. My mother is now an avid user of Facebook since she uses the internet to learn new stuff and interact with her old friends whom is also catching up using Facebook as well.

I discovered from my brother and also other people using Streamyx 384Kbps that the speed was sufficient for normal browsing and casual download. So the decision is final, we wanted to downgrade the existing 1MBps Streamyx to 384Kbps. After making calls to 100, the best way to downgrade is to go to the nearest TM Point which is for me located at Kepong. Since the line was still under my father's name and my father passed away last December, I first had to transfer the account to my name first by filling up a form before I can apply for the downgrade (RM10 was charged for the account transfer).



TM Point Kepong design is quite nice and comfortable, as usual the queue required me to wait for almost half an hour before my number turned up.



Here's another view of TM Point Kepong.



The only thing that surprised me was that my internet line would be disconnected for 2 weeks in order for the downgrade to proceed. I then asked when will the line would be cut, the guy at the counter said immediately. So, I was out of internet for 2 weeks. I had to use alternative broadband internet I have which is the DiGi Internet Prepaid that I've bought a while ago but the reception in my house was really slow. I then tried using Daily Unlimited Celcom Xpax Prepaid Internet during last weekend, the speed was acceptable but the budget was a bit steep for me.

I made a call to 100 last week which the operator told me the downgrade request hasn't been processed yet. So yesterday I made another call where I got the same answer with an additional information that I can request for a rebate for the entire stretch of my downtime (that was nice to hear). Last night, when I got back from home, my internet Streamyx was restored. A total downtime of 15 days.

So there you go, that was my experience downgrading TM Net Internet Streamyx.