As far as Malaysia is concerned, the culprit that is causing the slowdown in international links to the Internet cloud may have been determined.

A group of ISP customers around Kuala Lumpur gathered together September 15 to formalize a TM Net User Group for the Klang valley.

Senior management staff, led by TM Net CEO Michael Lai, turned up in full force to lend support to the meeting and a dialogue of sorts became an opportune moment to address the issue of international links..

Of late, broadband customers have been complaining of severe latency and speed lethargy connecting to international links.

In response, TM Net showed some stats to illustrate that the Internet pipeline linking Malaysia to the global world now totalled 17Gbps, with major links hooked to the center of Internet world, the US.

TM Net has also pledged to increase this to 21Gbps by December, and double it to 42Gbps by end 2007.

It’s a vast connectivity for a country of 25 million people, with less than 2 percent broadband penetration. Yet, international links have been slow. Or so the customers grouse.

“Will the increased bandwidth be sucked up by the P2P users in the same ratio?” Probably so, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference to a lot of people including myself. P2P is the future of online distribution, and TMNet can’t run away from that.   

 Then what about those perfectly legal stuffs like Skype (based on P2P) with Video Conferencing would really suck up bandwidth, right? Personally, I think as long as the users are doing legal stuffs on P2P, I think they shouldn’t be stopped. I have used P2P to download the MS Windows Vista RC1 because the MS downloader went till 90% and I accidentally off my PC, then I was back to 0%.   

You made it sounds like the answer to the title is something new. It has already been told by TMnet in the past that they would not benefit the P2P users by upgrading its bandwidth. Anyhow, everyone agreed that the could not be the main reason but TMnet’s lack of vision for the country is holding everyone back. Just because of these so called “culprit” companies that relies on TMnet on daily basis gets shot in the gut, painful and bleeding yet could still survive for a period of time. TMnet is holding the country back another 5 years because it just refuse to invest on something better than 10 years old copper lines.