Colin Charles Agenda

I was reading Hotel WiFi Should Be a Right, Not a Luxury, by Sarah Lacy at TechCrunch, and I tend to agree with her – Internet connectivity should be provided as part of a hotel package. Its not a right, but its 2010, it should be common courtesy.

I write this, while I myself am staying at an Express by Holiday Inn, in London, where the charge for 512/128kbps wired Internet is GBP7.50 for 24 hours of usage. To me, that is daylight robbery – it is about 1/10th the cost of the room! It is bitterly cold here, but if I was willing to walk about three hundred metres, there’s a bar nearby, with free WiFi access. So, I’m paying a comfort fee.

From a hoteliers point of view, I’m not using their telephone, because I have a mobile phone. I’m probably not buying their pay TV movies, because I can watch stuff on my 15″ MacBook Pro, or since I’m in the UK, and am using their Internet, I could also go to youtube.com/shows and catch something (it buffers a bit at 512kbps down, but that’s another story). If I didn’t want to use my expensive mobile phone (that’s roaming), I could always fire up a VoIP service, or use Skype, and make cheap phone calls via my PC. So from a hoteliers perspective, even giving me a 512/128 link, basically means they can’t slap me with charges for the usage of the phone, and they probably can’t even sell me pay TV.

I’ve stayed at many hotels over the years, and there is one thing I notice: the cheaper the hotel, the chance of getting free Internet access (at least in the lobby) is definitely higher. The more expensive it goes (think InterContinental’s, Westin’s, and the like), there’s usually a charge of about USD$10/day for Internet usage. Usually, if you’ve stayed at a chain long enough, priority members end up getting Internet access for free. Also, if you book into an “Executive” room (i.e. you’re on an expense account and the travel agency books this for you), there tends to be free Internet (alongside, some free fruit).

Sarah is lucky, living in America, since if most of her travel is within the States, you tend to be able to have mobile phone access, so 3G Internet shouldn’t be too far away. Or the Sprint MiFi’s. In fact, that’s exactly what I did when I stayed in Penang recently – the hotel was going to slap me a RM58/day fee for Internet usage (that’s 1/4th the cost of the room by the way), but I carried my 3G dongle, and DiGi gave me 1500kbps transfers, for free :-) (OK, I pay a monthly fee for it, but I use it everywhere I please, in Malaysia, where they have 3G coverage – otherwise I drop down to EDGE).

The same applies in Singapore. Charging folk up to SGD$20 per day of Internet usage, when Wireless@SG is available at most cafes for free, seems ridiculous. This is again, a case of paying a comfort fee. In Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, nowadays you can buy yourself 3G Internet prepaid SIM cards, that charge way less than what the hotel is going to slap you with, so if you have a dongle, go for it (they usually also sell SIM-unlocked dongles).

Why not do what the Royal Orchid in Bangalore does? They offer a basic connection for free, and offer a paid rate if you want a faster speed.

Spot on. Give me access for basic web surfing and email. If I really need to make VoIP calls (I’ve found 7kbps is more than enough for VoIP calls…) with better clarity, I can pony up and pay a fee. Ditto if I want to watch streaming video.

Let 2010 be the year where either data roaming can be capped (in Asia, I have data services capped at RM36/day while roaming), or there is widespread data usage from prepaid SIMs. The telcos can beat the hotels into submission! Or, let 2010 be the year, where we get free Internet piped in our rooms. Ubiquitous connectivity.

Taman Klang Jaya, formerly known as Taman Goodwood, currently gives me great woes, when it comes to getting an Internet connection. In short, there is no choice, but the monopoly that is Telekom Malaysia, and their substandard DSL service, better known as Streamyx.

Streamyx, as we all know, pretty much sucks. Heck, even Members of Parliament know this.

Hence, I have a Maxis Broadband modem. And guess what? Their 3G services not only suck in Taman Klang Jaya, they suck pretty much everywhere. On Twitter, people are suggesting to go back to just use the 2G network, and things work out fine. If the telco had any maruah, they’d do what DiGi did for their prepaid users: service outage = half price calls.

So I thought I’d try P1’s W1MAX. They seem to be selling in Klang, and I have a little Wiggy device. Still, no coverage in the area.

I’ve recently become a DiGi Broadband subscriber, and while it works fine (1mbps in my PJ home), it drops back to EDGE in Taman Klang Jaya. And as we all know, EDGE isn’t that fast.

So, what is a resident of Taman Klang Jaya to do? (Certainly, its not to subscribe to Streamyx, P1, Maxis and DiGi!) Rather than complain here on my blog, is it possible that I contact my local Member of Parliament? How do I even find out who my MP is? (Wow, that kid at BarCampKL that @tekong and I encountered, would be jumping all over this statement, right about now).

The state of broadband is such that even if I were to launch any high-bandwidth requirement businesses, I would fail. And I’m sure somewhere, in the MSC Bill of Guarantees, there is a provision that says the infrastructure itself must be world class. Streamyx today, is probably even worse than many third world countries I’ve visited.

So, I promised a bunch of people I’d write up how I used the P1 W1MAX WIGGY on my Mac. The gist behind this is VMWare hosts a guest OS that is Windows, and the host OS can be either Mac OS X or Linux, and all should be well, in terms of sharing the Internet connection, out to the host OS (via bridged networking). This will work if you have Linux as your host OS as well – you just need a Windows guest (since the bloody Wiggy drivers only work using Windows).

First up, I downloaded a modern VMware Fusion. Without realising this, I actually had a license for the 1.x product lying around, and I just upgraded it, for free. Win. You’re probably wondering why I didn’t just use VirtualBox? Its because for some reason, I can’t seem to get Windows Vista running in it — I’ll work on it later, but I just use what works and gets the job done.

So once Windows is installed (a very streamlined process, I didn’t even have to do anything, and it was ready in about 20 minutes), I proceeded to getting my Wiggy working on my Mac.

Create a wireless network on the Mac

Click the airport logo, click “create network” and just have a random network created, with the default channel. You now have a “computer-to-computer” network, on your Mac.

Change VMWare settings to allow for bridged network

Click on the settings of your particular virtual machine, hop over the the network, and select “Connect directly to the physical network (Bridged)”.

Plug the Wiggy in

Now, the Wiggy should be detected in Windows, and it will install the driver. Once that is sorted, it will attempt to make a connection and it should just work, provided you have WIMAX in your area.

Go to Control Panel -> Network Connections, and select the second connection (in my case, Local Area Connection 2). Hop on over to the properties, and make sure you turn on Internet Connection Sharing.

You may have to disable Local Area Connection (1) and re-enable it for all this magic to take effect. But at this point in time, you should be able to, on your Mac, browse the web, with no problems, whatsoever.

You just have to keep Windows running…

Anything else?

I tend to keep a really tiny VM running for Windows. Yes, the standard 1GB might make sense, but that’s too much, if all you have is about 2GB of RAM… Windows Vista seems to plod along just fine with 512MB of RAM. I’m told that with Windows XP, you should be ahead, with 256MB of RAM even…

Some more semi-useful screenshots:

Some wimax info, at my residence – that’s the Windows VM, and a Mac backround

Also, if you care how fast the Internet is at my residence, is a paltry 6.9mbps. Upload speeds aren’t that hot, but the download speed definitely is – so I’m wondering if I should be getting WIMAX in my house now…

I don’t know if this is the right use of Facebook, but Malaysia’s Deputy Higher Education Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah has decided that a good thing to do, is to be online, on the first and third Wednesday of every month, from 10-11pm (so he’s working nights), on Facebook, so that he can probably participate in a Facebook chat with students.

He mentions “Facebook messaging”, and its unclear if he plans to add students as his friends, to then get them chatting, or if he just wants to receive “email” via Facebook? Or is it a good way to get information about students that are griping to the minister, and mark the troublemakers out?

Who’s to say. Whatever it is, I don’t think Facebook is the right platform for this sort of thing, but kudos for trying to be hip.

This one’s too good to pass up. Jennifer Aniston (from the comedy sitcom I grew up to, Friends) has reportedly dumped John Mayer, because of his Twitter addiction. I quote:

The source said: “John suddenly stopped calling her or returning her emails and when she would finally catch up with him, he’d say: ‘I’ve been so busy with work. I’m sorry I haven’t had time to call you back.”

The source added: “Jen was fuming. There he was, telling her he didn’t have time for her and yet his page was filled with Twitter updates.

“Every few hours, sometimes minutes, he’d update with some stupid line. And in her mind, she was like ‘He has time for all this Twittering, but he can’t send me a text, an email, make a call?’.”

Twitter, used as evidence that one actually has time, to at least send a text, email or make a call, it seems. Apparently, John Mayer even took the break up like a man, and sent a message to Twitterverse: My six word story: “This heart didn’t come with instructions.” Candid!

From a quick take on his feed, it seems he uses Tweetie, TwitterBerry and the web a lot for updates. So not only is he addicted to his BlackBerry, he loves his iPhone/iPod Touch, and apparently twitter.com. Maybe someone should introduce him to desktop clients like twhirl or TweetDeck? :-)

On Twitter, there’s been some conversation about this, naturally. At first, I couldn’t believe it, but it seems its possible. We know divorce via SMS or email is shunned upon, but in this part of the world, you can divorce someone just by saying “talak” three times. Its not clear if its allowed in Malaysia or not (the BBC suggests it was OK, but is unacceptable).

This stuff is almost as interesting as getting killed over your Facebook relationship status.

Do you know of people that got together because of Twitter or Facebook? Broke up because of Twitter or Facebook? I’m interested to know the stories behind them.

The fun with Maxis Broadband continues. I last wrote about the real story behind Maxis Broadband, which apparently is quite a favourite amongst Google searches. Today, @hantu asks on Twitter: $99 mobile unlimited or $138 maxis broadband?.

Lets delve into this a little deeper. I have the RM99 mobile unlimited connection, so that my E71 can surf the Internet. It allows me to check and send email on the go, post updates to Twitter, perform quick Google searches, and when I’m waiting for someone, read my Google Reader feeds. I estimate I use about 150MB or so per month, and this will probably grow in size, as I have JoikuSpot installed, and can share it with my iPod Touch. If I had an iPhone (and used it), I can imagine my data usage being a lot higher.

I’ve also had a Maxis Broadband SIM card, that I pay RM143 per month for. No, its not RM138, because they decided to send me a bill, which costs RM5/month. Nothing I do, can stop me from receiving said paper bill (not even threatening to stop their services). Do I use the Mobile Broadband services? Yes I do – I average 2GB per month, sometimes more, depending on where I choose to work for majority of the time.

In my head, I’ve been thinking, with the economy being the way it is: why am I paying RM143 and RM99 for mobile data? I noticed Maxis had a “Multi-SIM” service, in where you pay RM15/month, and you get a second SIM for your number. I thought that this was the way out – get a second SIM for my primary number, pay an extra RM15 and share the 3G connection (the second SIM to be placed in my broadband modem, a Huawei E220).

To my dismay, I visited the Maxis store and was told I couldn’t do this. If I wanted a second SIM, my services don’t extend to it. That means, I have to pay RM15 + RM10 + RM99 for the second SIM. Could I have found two idiots at the Maxis Centre in Klang – quite possibly – I think her name was Lina, and her supervisor was no better.

Maxis has an FAQ that suggests I can get a second SIM card, and just place it in my broadband modem. Imagine, only paying RM99+15 (RM114) rather than RM242.

My only solace? I don’t pay RM143 any longer. I only pay RM118, as I have Mobile Broadband and I am a Maxis postpaid customer. If you listen to the customer service representative, you’ll realise that you’re paying RM124 per month. I however think the customer service rep, is just being a plain idiot, and this can be fixed.

Why don’t I just use JoikuSpot, or tether via Bluetooth, to my Nokia E71? Because of battery life. The last time I tethered to my Nokia E61i, I had about 2 hours of battery life, before the phone got really hot in my pants pocket, and the battery went almost flat. Not having a working phone, is of course, unacceptable, which is why I’ve gone the mobile broadband route.

So, Andy, what’s your best choice? It depends on your usage. If you’re using your phone a lot, get an unlimited data package for RM99. If you don’t need access too much, consider Bluetooth tethering, which will work OK (maybe you have to carry a phone charger around). If you need to sit in cafes a lot, or work away from your desk and proper Internet connection, consider the Mobile Broadband package, at RM143/RM138/RM118 (paper bill/no paper bill/Maxis postpaid Bolt-on program).

If I ever get this multi-SIM bullshit figured out, I’ll be sure to write about it, and let you all save money. If any other provider (Celcom, DiGi, U mobile) offer it, don’t hesitate to leave a comment behind.