If you’re a tech savvy person especially in the communication field, I’m sure you have probably heard about TM’s plan to roll out their HSBB (High Speed Broadband) service in the Klang Valley throughout this whole year. I know that most existing Streamyx users will just wonder what’s so great about it since they can’t even provide a stable broadband service with their Streamyx most of the time but HSBB incorporates the use of fibre optics and I believe it will be the next step to further improve the broadband service here in Malaysia.

So what exactly is this TM HSBB? It is also known as high speed broadband with speeds of up to 20mbps (might be higher when it is officially launched) allowing the users to download files in just “a blink of an eye”. With HSBB, your downloading experience will never be the same again. Just imagine downloading a movie at speeds higher than 10mbps, I think hard disk drives will be selling like hot cakes by then. Besides having blazing fast download speed, the latency/ping to local servers will also be drastically reduced, it will be capable to get below 5ms and it’ll almost be like playing LAN games for gamers all thanks to the fibre optics technology.

If you ever come across the white/beige small box with a TM FTTH sticker on the box attached to any of the telephone poles in your housing area just as it is in the above photo, be prepared as your housing area is already ready for the TM HSBB service.

Even any sight of a green box that looks similar to a really nice looking rubbish bin is already a sign of TM HSBB in your housing area. If you have not been paying attention to any of it then maybe you should starting from the point you read this post.

In the above photo is the modem provided by TM in order to get connected with their HSBB service. For the current beta testers, they were also given a D-Link DIR-615 wireless router which had the configuration to connect and the beta testers were advised not to do a hard reset on the router or else they would lose the configurations causing them to be unable to connect. To those of you who thought that you will also need the router provided by them to connect, its not, the truth is that TM did not openly reveal the configurations so you wouldn’t know what parameters to use for your own router.

Above are some bandwidth test results via speedtest.net conducted by one of the HSBB beta testers. If you look at the connectivity to the local server, it is a whopping near 20mbps for both downstream and upstream with only 2ms ping, if we have more local content in the future then HSBB will definitely benefit a lot of the users since everything will be speedy. International connectivity for most of the servers are not even 50% of 20mbps and it is disappointing but since its still in the beta testing stage, it is still a bit early to judge the whole HSBB service. However, if the existing international pipes don’t get an upgrade, it will be difficult to achieve even 10mbps to an international server.

The pricing for the service is still not known until today but there are rumours speculating that it could be somewhere around RM150 for the lowest package believed to be a 5mbps package. The packages are yet to be revealed so if you have any insider information, share it via the comments!

While the HSBB service by TM definitely sounds convincing, the test results by the beta testers have yet to show the public the worth and what HSBB can do. I am still awaiting for the full potential to be unleashed, I hope it will. If you’re one of the beta testers, do not hesitate to leave a comment and share your opinion on the service. If you’re not a beta tester, you too can share your opinion and will you subscribe to it when it reaches your place?

*Credits to dr3nchippo and mytechnews.info for the photos