Mobile operator DiGi has lifted the 3G speed cap on their prepaid service, allowing Internet speeds up to 3Mbps from a slow 384Kbps previously.
DiGi 1st launched their 3G service for broadband customers in March 2009 followed by postpaid in December 2009 and later prepaid. At launch time, DiGi said its “Turbo 3G” network offered download speed up to 14.4Mbps however broadband and postpaid customers were only offered an average speed of 700Kbps while prepaid customers were limited to 384Kbps.
About 3 years later, after many complaints on the poorly designed 3G network, DiGi increased the speed limit for prepaid customers in late November 2013(in stages).
We tried to get DiGi’s corporate communication team to give us more details just before the holidays last week unfortunately we received no reply as most of them are away.
However based on what our good friends at DiGi told us, the prepaid Internet download speed goes up to 3Mbps and upload is capped at 1Mbps. There are plans to double these speeds this year but progressively.
Below is a speedtest result we managed to obtain via DiGi Prepaid Internet.
[Android Speedtest app on BlackBerry Z30, download speed 2.82Mbps and about 500Kbps upload speed]
[Comment]
DiGi started as a prepaid-focused mobile operator. Over time, prepaid don’t seem to be a priority at DiGi anymore as compared to postpaid services. There appear to be more mobile plans and marketing campaigns for postpaid over the past 4-5 years.
But prepaid numbers continues to grow and dominate at DiGi. As of quarter 3 last years, approximately 90% or some 9 million DiGi customers are using prepaid. Out of DiGi’s 10.8 million total subscribers, there are some 6.8 million data users in the network, high likely a large number of prepaid users.
It wasn’t right for prepaid customers to get slow 3G speed when postpaid customers gets to enjoy faster speed for the same price. DiGi’s “Internet for All” marketing campaign over the past few years don’t seem to be done right, until the recent speed upgrade for prepaid.
We are happy that DiGi finally made these improvements but will it be enough?
Hotlink and U Mobile prepaid are already offering speeds up to 42Mbps and they have better 3G coverage compared to DiGi. Adding on, U Mobile prepaid, Hotlink and Xpax now offers 4G LTE. What is holding DiGi back from offering prepaid LTE?
Its 2014 and we hope it won’t take DiGi another 3 years for the so called “The Tomorrow Network“. We haven’t seen the next generation network yet.
Time to keep up DiGi and we mean like….. Now.
