UPDATE (9:20 PM): TM has sent us an official statement to address the issue highlighted by this article. Scroll down further to check it out.
ORIGINAL STORY (1:30 PM):
Last month, TM had added 500Mbps and 800Mbps plans into its unifi Home Broadband line-up. Alongside its respective download speed, both plans come with an identical upload speed of 200Mbps.
Barely a month later though, the company quietly slashed the upload speed for the 500Mbps plan to 100Mbps. First reported by SoyaCincau, a customer in Parit Buntar had experienced the disparity first hand who then demanded an explanation from TM but was told by the staff at TMpoint that the 200Mbps was actually “a mistake”.
TM even updated the Home Broadband and unifi Your World section of unifi’s official website to reflect the reduced upload speed for the 500Mbps plan. However, the company missed one spot during what could be seen as its attempt to cover the “mistake”.
We have discovered that TM didn’t replace the original FAQ document for unifi Your World promo on this section of the website. The document which was dated 19 August 2020 as indicated by its title, showed original 200Mbps upload speed for the 500Mbps plan and this was the same document that we had screenshot for our report back in August.
You can download a copy of the document right here and compare it for yourself. While TM forgot to update this particular document, the company has edited the main FAQ document for unifi to display the newly reduced upload speed and has also provided another version of unifi Your World’s FAQ on this part of the website.
All in all, TM should have been upfront about the speed reduction and publicly notified its customers. Instead, the company kept the matter in secret for unknown reasons and are now facing the possibility of regulatory action, as the customer who highlighted the issue has since filed a complaint to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) with regards to the matter.
UPDATE (9:20 PM):
TM has provided an official statement to address the disparity of the upload speed for unifi 500Mbps plan:
“We refer to your article titled ‘TM Quietly Slashed unifi 500Mbps Plan Upload Speed To Half’ on 18 September 2020 highlighting the change of upload speed of unifi’s 500Mbps package.
Telekom Malaysia Berhad wishes to clarify that there has been no change to the upload speed configuration for its existing unifi 500Mbps package.
We wish to inform that a correction was made to an error in the upload speed for its 500Mbps package stated in the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), unifi Portal and leaflets on 2 September 2020. The correct upload speed configuration for its 500Mbps is 100Mbps instead of 200Mbps stated in the earlier version of the FAQs, unifi Portal and leaflets.
We would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused and assure our customers that all of our channels, including our website, and marketing materials have been updated to reflect the correct information.”
Based on the statement, it seems that TM still stands firm behind its story that the original 200Mbps upload speed for unifi 500Mbps plan was a “mistake”.
This is despite the plan was first officially offered to users on 24 August 2020, around one week before the “correction” was quietly implemented on the website, documents, and marketing materials for the plan.
It also ignores the fact that numerous media outlets including Lowyat.NET have published news reports regarding the new plan on 24 August itself which may have mentioned the 200Mbps upload speed. In our case, we also include a screenshot of the plan in the news report (shown above), which was taken from the unifi Your World’s original FAQ document.
The statement above also seems to ignore the fact that the file name of the original FAQ document – FAQ_unifi_Your_World_Campaign_19082020_FINAL.pdf – which gave the impression that information contained within it has been finalized.
Not to forget, TM has also sent the unifi Your World press kit to media on 1 September 2020 (as shown above) which includes marketing material that listed 200Mbps as the upload speed for unifi 500Mbps plan.
If it was really a “mistake”, then why TM choose to quietly “correct” the information, especially given that it is a major element of the product?
Since the “correction” was done on 2 September 2020, as mentioned in the statement above, that means TM has more than 2 weeks to inform everyone regarding it. Yet, no such action was taken by the company until a few hours after this report was published.
Based on our observations and the timeline that we have mentioned above, the official statement that TM has provided to us is quite perplexing, to say the least.
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