Control freak

It befuddles me how our government tries to control every facet of our lives. There are certain areas of national importance which I fully understand, but there are areas which I certainly do not.

Broadband has really made a difference in our lives. But wait a minute. Why would a regular day-to-day user like want to use broadband, unless I want to access the Internet and need high download or access speeds? There lies the crux of the matter. TMNet (almost the only Internet service provider out there) has decided to regulate the amount of access speeds to certain sites. I mean in my case torrent sites (for the uninitiated, torrent sites are sites where individuals may download programs, music, movie etc. for free - granted that the sites may be illegal) and P2P file sharing sites. Downloads are awfully slow recently. A TV show of 350 MB takes me about 18 hours instead of the usual 2 1/2 hours to download. Imagine downloading movies of 1 GB...

Their excuse is that these sites take up the bulk of the bandwidth available. Of course it does, and it's about the only reason why we would pay RM 88/month for Internet access: so that we can see and download our favourite shows/movies, which we could not get here (or wait for it to arrive here)!!!

Changing service providers is not the option, since the only other competitor is being priced out of the game. In short, we are at the mercy of TMNet.

What will be next: other sites? It will never end. It's about time that the government grow up and trust us, or provide us with alternatives (which are currently not available).

In the mean time, please be a good and understanding big brother...