Kelvin my neighbor who stays 3 floors down from my apartment called me up this evening and asked me to meet him at the lift lobby cos he was going to pass me the new P1 modem to try out in my unit. The P1 coverage map shows that 1/3 of my apartment block is within their coverage area and so happened, my unit is slightly out of the coverage area. Block B which is right next to our block is totally out of the coverage area range. I wonder why they plan their capacity in such a way. This apartment has over 550 units and most of the residents here are young working adults and families which I believe can potentially become Packetone’s long term customers but yet so many months after their launch, nothing is being done about the coverage for the whole apartment complex. Furthermore, my apartment is located within the inner KL city limits, which is 10km radius of KLCC.
When I got the package, the first thing that struck me was the product itself. It’s matt black finish and compact size is really compelling. As compared to Maxis broadband’s ZTE modem which I signed up for 2 years ago, this modem has much more appeal! Furthermore the blue neon indicator lights is really cool. It reminds me of the new Hyundai Elantra speedometer. Their P1 logo right in the middle of the modem body on one side also lights up when you turn on the unit. I couldn’t locate any on/off buttons on the set though. The whole product design is actually quite simple, and it reminds me of a mini ionizer!
Basically the indicators are simple to understand. Just picture a traffic light. Red, amber and green light. Red being the worst coverage, amber is so-so coverage and green is excellent coverage. When the ‘traffic lights’ are blinking it means there is no or limited connectivity and when it stops blinking it means there is signal strength.
Unlike the ZTE modem, this unit doesn’t have a slot for you to insert your 3g simcard as it runs on wimax. This evening when I got the package, plugged it into my notebook and ran the speedtest available at http://speed.p1.com.my the first reading I got was 266 for DL speed and 100 for UL speed. I ran a second test right after and got 400+ for DL speed and the same UL speed. If you are paying RM49 for the most basic package, I think this speeds are quite reasonable to accept. However I’m not very clear about the fair usage policy. I need to go to P1 to get further explanation about this. 5GB limit for home user sounds a little bit to little. I wonder if I use it for normal surfing, chatting with my friends, updating my facebook page etc would 5GB be enough? Would they cut me off after I have used 5GB? Is 5GB of usage per day or per month? So many questions, so little answers!
Now it’s 11:30pm, the red light has been blinking for the past half an hour and I couldn’t access any of my websites, it alternates between red, amber and even a few seconds of green every minute. Right now only it has kinda settled down a little. I wonder if we will get that every time we attempt to use it. My friend told me that I can hook up a wireless router to it and use it wirelessly without having to plug the thing into my notebook and be stuck in one place. I definitely gotta find out more about that.
Finally, this is a great product if you know where to place the modem to get the best coverage. I live on the 11th floor of an apartment complex which has another 5 storey of car park. That makes it 17 storeys high but I still don’t face the problem I previously faced when I was using Maxis broadband, which when I called their customer service hotline was told I need to be 5th floor and below to get the best results, what about people living on the 30th floor of their condo? Does this mean that I am not a valuable broadband user?
I still have my slight dissatisfaction about not being able get full coverage inside my apartment but so far it has been quite stable. Since I am only going to get to use this modem for 1 day, I wouldn’t know what the long term service quality is going to be like unless I sign up for a package myself.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
