fast internet in indonesia: too good to be true?

On with the broadband multimedia (now first media) melodrama. Don't they ever learn?

Starting Sept 2007, Broadband Multimedia (see my long review about it) changed its name to First Media (apparently to “get rid” of their bloody past & start anew), and invested US$650 million for the new services, primarily FastNet. It looks promising with the new offer: fast & cheap internet. But we'll see if they could maintain good internet service with their extremely lousy customer service, especially with the high demands.

In fact, as much as I wanted to try the seemingly fast internet (up to 3 mbps), I got myself to think over and over again if it's worth the effort to try. Especially after reading the reviews found at these places:

• Detik Forum
• Kaskus
• Mac Club Indonesia
• Forum Ponsel

From reading the fourth link above, FastNet looks bad even before the service starts. It may be fast at first, but with so many new customers signing up, I’m sure it will be quite a short time before everything starts to slow down. Lots of new users = bandwidth has to be shared even much more = slower internet? We’ll see about that.

But most importantly, don't they learn that the most important thing to a successful business is the customer service? If they changed the name, without improving the customer service, everything will turn out bad in the end. It's useless. It's a waste of money, a $650 million, no less! And finally it will just become a "too good to be true" tale: a fast & cheap internet in Indonesia, that is. One could only wish, right?

Nevertheless, I still want to try it, maybe for a month or two. Without closing my Speedy connection, of course. I cannot rely on FastNet alone, for anything could happen. Remember the horror of 2 weeks being without internet!

Ultimately, and actually it's my wish, I sure hope - with the new competition - Speedy will lower its price & upgrade the bandwidth very soon *crosses fingers*

If that happens, it will be a good improvement in developing this waaaay underdeveloped country & breaking the monopoly business. Whether Indonesia is ready for that... we shall see.

the good ol' anime collectives era

Really now, this LJ post of foxleaps and the comments made me so nostalgic. I can't help but being reminiscent of the good old days of the anime collectives era. I was in college by then... about 6-10 years ago, I think. I made so many international friends, and managed to regularly keep in touch with some of them, to the point of chatting, talking on the phone, sending stuff via snail mail, and even visiting each other! The wonders of the anime community.

What has happened now? As the trend shifted to mostly social networking sites, I could only find a small number of the webmistress & webmaster of the good old anime collective sites. They mostly don't maintain anime collectives anymore, but still maintain their online presence one way or another. Most of them have LJ, so we can still connect to each other. But what I really miss is the community...

Sure, life goes on, but I don't buy it if they didn't go online. With the current technology and the fact that the internet world has been a part of daily life (I mean, I would love to see someone who doesn't have an email address nowadays! Really, even my friend's daughter who's only 3 years old has an email address!), I think everyone still goes online. They just prefer to not maintain their old online presence anymore... Or maybe they do, but I just can't find them. Who knows.

Above all, though, I know one thing for sure. Most of their priority in life is certainly not anime anymore. By now most of us anime collective owners will be above 20... and some of us are even above 30. I myself am only 2 years away from being 30.

So anyhow, if you're from the good old anime collective days, and used to keep in touch with me one way or another a few years ago, do notify me! I'd be more than happy to meet old friends :3