Rencana ini agak melucukan tetapi sindirannya tajam...

Perhatikan MSC, adalah singkatan M=Manyak S=Susah C=Cucok atau Mahathir Senang Curi pandang parlimen dan duit negara?

Source: [sangkancil]
From: [jismail@maxis.net.my]

MSC - Manyak Susah Cucok (internet connection)

I've just had a moving experience I'd like to share with you. Having just purchased a house in SS1 Petaling Jaya, I thought it would be a good idea to wire up the house before I move in. Now, every room in my newly renovated house is hooked up and ready for the Net. With great excitement I went over to Telekom Malaysia's "House of Internet" (who comes up with these idiotic names?) and inquired about Internet connections.

Amazingly, the only thing Telekom Malaysia could offer me was a plain old telephone line for a 56K connection. And what about the much touted High-speed Internet Service (HIS)? Well you can only get it if you are an existing HIS user. Errrr, but how do I get to be an existing HIS user? Well, you can't!

And what about ADSL? Hmmm that will cost you 33,000 a year plus access charges. And they wonder why no one wants to use it! So that left me with ISDN. Yes sir no problem, they said. But you have to go across town to the Kedai Telekom and see if they have that available in your area, sign up for that and then go talk to "House of Internet". I suppose the term "one-stop shop" for Telekom Malaysia means, "we stop you from shopping straight away". Then there's the whole issue of cost. A 128K connection will cost 10 sen a minute, whereas a 56K line will just cost 2.5 sen. So you pay 4 times the cost for about double the capacity. In the end I just decided on two data lines which I'll combine into one connection.

The moral of this story is, we like to talk about the MSC and IT but rarely do we walk the talk. I don't see how we can live up to the multi-mega boasts of our leaders if you can't get a fast Internet connection in the Klang Valley (let's not even talk about the rest of the country).

In the meantime, countries like South Korea forge ahead by providing cheap and fast connections to their citizens. Instead of spending a Billion or so on a dubious scheme to computerise the hospitals, South Korea is quietly upgrading their national communications infrastructure. I am sick of hearing how massive IT projects which have no clear cut benefits to the country is being awarded to the newly minted "tansri-prenuers" while we the citizens have to put up with expensive but crappy connections. Something is wrong with this picture. We get pay to get bad connections, while they get paid because of their good "connections". K-Economy? I often wonder if the "K" stands for "Kroni" instead of "Knowledge".