The telecommunications industry in Malaysia is arguably at its most competitive today than at any point in the past. Many Malaysians are now prioritising mobile data rather than calls and texts, which has lead to Malaysian telcos offering larger Internet quotas to meet the demand.
Enter U Mobile and its latest postpaid plan, the Hero P98. As its name suggests, for a monthly commitment fee of RM98 a month you’ll be getting a whopping 30GB of high-speed Internet with unlimited Video-Onz streaming. Apart from that, you will also get unlimited calls to all networks but SMS charges are applicable (3 sen – on net / 8 sen – off net).
As someone who lives without any WiFi at home (the apartment where I rent my room has no Internet services whatsoever), this was a particularly intriguing plan for me. When presented with the chance to “stress test” this plan, I was more than happy to do it.
On weekdays, I spend most of my time at the office which has WiFi connection, so I don’t use much data during day time. What really comes into play is when I am at home at night or during most weekends – I’ve been told that my Internet usage can be “troubling” in just how much data I use.
I decided to make it a personal challenge to use up all 30GB in my month using the Hero P98 SIM.
I set up my smartphone with the Hero P98 SIM card inside, turning it into a personal WiFi hotspot for my room, and used the SIM exclusively for data while on the go. To try to fully utilise all this data, I set all Google services (such as Google Play and Google Photos) to sync using mobile data, and if there’s a system update for my phone, I’d just download it.
The weekends are also the time I fire up the YouTube app and catch up on my lengthy list of YouTube subscriptions. There are instances when the connection has some short buffering, but if you take into account that it will not take up any data from the 30GB quota due to Video-Onz, that’s more than acceptable for me.
Yup, on the Hero P98 plan, I’m also automatically subscribed to Video-Onz, which allows me to watch hours after hours of YouTube videos for free, without using the allocated 30GB quota.
In fact, Video-Onz has a huge list of video streaming services that allow me to binge on series and movies for hours at a time, and my data quota will remain untouched. As someone determined to clear off 30GB of data in a month, this was bad news – but great news for those who spend their weekends on YouTube and iflix.
Being the social media guy for our site, I have to keep Lowyat.NET’s social media pages updated with a variety of content. Some of them are GIF files, and those aren’t exactly tiny files. The Facebook app itself is a data-intensive app, using up hundreds of megabytes with its autoplay videos. Lovely.
I also play Dota 2 a lot. The game constantly has updates, and most of the updates can be quite large. That said, I need my daily fix of Dota 2 (and I’m on a mission to use as much data) so I’ll just update the game using the Hero P98 data, and continue playing the game on U Mobile’s mobile data itself.
I know, playing an online game (especially Dota 2) on a mobile data connection almost seems suicidal. But, it’s actually pretty good. There were one or two disconnects throughout the month of almost daily Dota sessions, but none were bad enough that made me abandon a match. In terms of ping, I was getting around 15ms to 30ms with 2% to 6% packet loss, which is actually very smooth.
Having 30GB of U Mobile’s 4G LTE at my expense feels like I have unlimited Internet in my hands. I never worried about the quota running out, even towards the end of my month-long test. I also did not receive any SMS from U Mobile warning me of my mobile data usage, which is a common occurrence on my normal postpaid plan.
Throughout the test, I tracked my daily data usage to see just how much data I consumed (and of course, if I’d successfully used up 30GB of data). I felt fairly confident that I did, because I spent a lot more time on the Internet during that month, and I normally use about 15GB of data every month.
Here’s how my month of trying to use 30GB of data ended. On weekdays, I used an average of 300MB, which was to be expected since I rely on the WiFi connection in the office. On the weekends, I used up an average of 1GB of data daily. If you total the average amount of data I use, that’s about 14GB which is just shy of half of what U Mobile’s Hero P98 postpaid plan offers.
I found the results wholly unexpected, considering the amount of time spent on YouTube, iflix, and even Facebook. Of the three services, the existence of Video-Onz meant that I was only actively using up my 30GB quota on Facebook – it undeniably chugs data, but the Hero P98 plan was more than equal to it. I was expecting to use a lot more data, but U Mobile’s Hero P98 left me with plenty of headroom despite my best efforts.
———————–
With more applications requiring the use of Internet, U Mobile has stepped up to meet consumer demand for more data. U Mobile’s Hero P98 offers arguably the best value for money postpaid plan you can find right now, with the generous 30GB of mobile data with unlimited calls to all networks. There are charges for SMS usage, but it’s almost negligible considering how much we use that service these days
To learn more about U Mobile’s Hero P98 postpaid plan, you can head on to the official website here.
Disclosure: This article was sponsored by U Mobile.
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Telegram for more updates and breaking news.
