UniFi Broadband - an overview

ABOUT UNIFI.

UniFi is a combination of "Uni" which denotes togetherness and camaraderie, while "Fi" symbolises fibre optics. This is a new service provided by TM Net Sdn Bhd, an Internet Service Provider in Malaysia.

Initiated and signed in September 2008, the RM11.3 billion national HSBB (High-Speed Broadband) project is a PPP agreement between TM and the government to develop next generation HSBB infrasructures and services. TM is putting up RM 8.9 billion while the government is co-investing RM2.4 billion on an incurred claims basis based on project milestones reached by TM. UniFi is a bundle triple play service offering High Speed Internet, HyppTV (IPTV) and voice.

The launch of UniFi is expected to intensify competition within the broadband space, which has seen the entrance of wireless broadband players like P1. Competitor YTL launched its WiMax wireless broadband in November 2010.

Malaysian government is banking on the HSBB project, which is the flagship of the National Broadband Initiative (NBI), to help Malaysia catch up with advanced countries such as Japan, Korea and Singapore, which have offered high speed broadband at relatively low prices for the past several years.

The rollout of Telekom Malaysia Berhad's (TM) High Speed Broadband (HSBB) service, UniFi, continues to be on track with service availability now expanded to an additional 48 areas nationwide, bringing the total of premises passed to more than 750,000 at the end of 2010. This means that TM is well on the first phase of the HSBB project rollout.

TM - UniFi

TM has just issued a release saying that it will expand availability areas for UniFi to include Penang, Johor and more areas in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor from July 1.

Specifically, TM will extend UniFi to Kulim Hi-Tech Park (Kedah), Bayan Baru (Penang), Senai and Permas (Johor) industrial areas and residential areas in Wangsa Maju, Sungai Buloh, Melawati, Kepong, Cyberjaya and Damansara.

Currently, the UniFi FTTH service is only available in four urban areas within Klang Valley- Shah Alam, Subang Jaya, Bangsar and Taman Tun Dr. Ismail.

TM claims that UniFi can now serve over 375,ooo premises in its coverage areas with over 3,200 customers currently using the service. By the numbers, it looks like UniFi's uptake is worryingly slow considering that the service has been available since March. With just 3,200 subscribers, you're looking at just over 1,000 subscribers a month, less than 40 subscribers a day.

With over 375,ooo premises within the service's availability areas, the total number of subscribers on UniFi is less than 1% of that number.

They're not sure what's going on here. Is it that Malaysian's don't want or need high-speed broadband or that TM's not promoting the service enough.

They suspect it's a bit of both further compounded by security risk Uni Fi customers are exposed to when using the service.

More alarming, TM has spent a whooping RM2.3 billion on UniFi to date. If you do the Math, with just 3,200 subscribers using the service right now, that equates to a cost of RM7.2 million per subscriber.

Fast internet is definitely not cheap people.

UniFi HyppTV Review

The UniFi IPTV service itself — namely, HyppTV.

Channels

The HyppTV IPTV service runs on its own dedicated network. For IPTV, TM has allotted 8Mbps of bandwidth which is good enough for HD streaming and more than enough for SD streaming. There are currently 22 channels with more channels to come by the end of the year. Out of these channels, only 2 channels are in HD.

 

Channels are classified into three — Live TV, Video On Demand (VOD) and inter@ctive.

Live TV includes local and international broadcast channels. Local channels include free-to-air channels like TV1, TV2, TV3, NTV7, 8TV, TV9, etc. Some of the international channels include Australia Network, BBC Lifestyle, BBC Knowledge, Fashion TV HD, LUXE.TV HD, Star Chinese Channel, etc. Some of these channels are Premium channels. Come September 2010, for VIP5 and VIP10 customers, a separate subscription will be required for Premium channels. For VIP20 customers, the Premium channels will be part of the package.

In VOD or pay-per-view if you like, there’s a selection of Hollywood, Malay, Chinese as well as Bollywood titles. Movies typically have a validity of 24 hours. Within that 24 hours you can watch the movie as many number of times as you like.One of the highlights in the VOD offering is the Hollywood Premiere Series; this selection contains the latest TV series — available 24 hours after the US release.

For TV series, validity is typically 30 days or longer.

 

For some titles, free previews or trailers are available on demand. Purchasing a VOD title is easy; just select the title from the on-screen VOD catalog (see above) and enter a PIN. During this preview period, TM is giving out free trial tokens. Once purchased, the title is ready to be watched immediately or anytime within the validity period. For VOD, playback control is available i.e. pause, fast-forward, reverse and bookmarking.

There’s even an option to rate a title. The average rating for a title is displayed in the on-screen VOD catalog.

inter@ctive channels include flight info, Malaysian history, Malaysian football and games (see below). I understand more interactive services will be added on later. Can we expect a YouTube channel? That would be nice isn’t it?

IPTV Video Quality

In general, the colors from IPTV seem more vivid compared to the colors from Astro — at least on an SDTV. HD channels will still play on an SDTV but the aspect ratio need to be manually adjusted.

Though UniFi’s IPTV service is not affected by the rain as in Astro, occasionally, there’ll be those nasty picture artifacts similar to Astro. Nevertheless, those artifacts often disappear fast enough before becoming annoying. Note that I’m using HomePlugs for my IPTV setup. A wired network connection to the IPTV may give better experience.

Switching between channels is almost instantaneous but I’ve observed some stuttering in the first few seconds after a channel switch — possibly due to buffering?

There’s also Picture-in-Picture (PIP) (see below).

Concerns

To view IPTV on the television set, all equipment necessary to support IPTV like the fiber broadband termination unit, residential gateway and set-top box (STB) must be turned on. If HomePlugs are used in an IPTV setup, that must be switched on too. So, as you can see, should any of the equipment fail, IPTV won’t work! To add to the concern, the residential gateway (DLink DIR-615) provided by TM has been reported to be very fragile; it tends to get fried.