At the first hour of today 5th July 2012, we managed to get it working. Yes at 12+am it worked, even though it was sent to us at 2.25pm yesterday.
Why did we take so long to get it to work?
Well, because we did not know anything about Fibre Broadband and though the M1 staff gave us lots of details on the monetary side of things, there was none on the technical side of things. To me, terms like Fibre Optic Broadband, Fibre Broadband, OpenNet, FibreNet, are so confusing. Are they the same? I really do not bother. All I care about is will it work better than cable broadband.
My hubby and I are price-driven kind of people, but when it comes to technical stuff, we prefer to seek advice before we decide and NOT look at price to make a decision.
We are far from being labeled as 'Internet Savvy'. Allan is happy knowing how to get to his emails and Facebook games, while I am happy so long as I can work on my blogs and communicate with friends and loved ones through Facebook, Skype and MSN chat.
After putting up a question on OpenNet on my Facebook, friends started contributing like a river.
***With the privacy of my friends in mind, I decided to take away their names and profile picture for this post.
So after '
hearing' so much, we decided to sign up for M1 Fibre Broadband service.
When we were at the M1 shop about a week ago, I remembered that the ONLY technical question I asked the M1 staff was,
"So after the installation, I can surf the Internet immediately, right?"
The smiley staff said,
"Yes."
Errrrmm..... only half true for us.
With just the modem provided by M1, ONLY 1 PC/Laptop can be used with a cable connecting the two devices.
We needed to buy a router in order to use Fibre Broadband on all the devices at home which includes 1 PC, 1 Laptop, 1 smartphone and 1 iPad.
And the router is NOT provided by M1.
We need to buy from those IT shops.
And its NOT any router, it MUST BE an N Router.
Maybe to some of you, this is common sense.
But for us, who are totally aliens to such things, we had NO IDEA MAN!
So we decided to buy the N Router when we fetch our younger son from school at 6pm.
That costs us another $69.00 and did I mention that the startup cost is REALLY HIGH for Fibre Broadband compared to Cable Broadband?
In fact, even when one decides to stop using the service,
even after contract is over, there is still an amount to pay.
Hhhhmmmm.......
We did not need to pay a cent when we sign up at the M1 shop, as the charges will be reflected in our bill. I am still waiting for my bill to come. He said lots of "pay this and that", but we did not really pay attention to the details, because we knew we wanted this service, so we had to pay whatever that needs to be paid. So seriously, errr.... I do not really know what is the damage like.
Would probably come back later to update this post after I received my bill. *shrugged*
I signed up with M1 when they were having the $39-a-month promotions for 100Mbps.
They gave me a free fixed phone line.
With this free fixed phone line, I can
cancel the Singtel phone line, which I am paying about $20+ every 3 months.
And M1 also threw in another mobile broadband plan of $5 per month for
1GB, which is perfect for me because my monthly usage hardly reaches 1GB
and I was paying $36.38 every month for Starhub's mobile broadband
plan.
Thus with this, Starhub lost one customer. I called to
cancel the service the VERY Day I signed up with M1, and replaced the Starhub sim card with M1's into my HuaWei Mobile WiFi gadget.
Though
the one time startup cost might have been on the high side, but in the
long run, I save more money with the
'throw ins' that came with this M1
Fibre broadband promotion.
Whoo-hoo!
*clap clap clap*
Ok, so is Fibre Broadband better than Cable Broadband?
In my opinion, yes for speed, but no for space! *laugh*
There I go again.... for most things in life, there is always good and bad....
Now we have to make space for two gadgets instead of one previously.
In the past, we just pluck the telephone line into the router and Ta-Daa, can connect to the internet, for everyone in the house.
But now, we need to have the modem AND the router and none of them stands up vertically, so I need to make space for them to lie flat.
Hhhmmm....
The MOST AMAZING PART WAS..... *drum roll*
I could upload my videos onto YouTube at a much Much MUCH FASTER SPEED!!!
This might sound crazy, but its truly my experience.
For the past few months, a five minute long video can take up to 3 hours to upload!!!
And today, I uploaded 11 videos of average length of 3 minutes each and it only take 15mins!!!
*Jaws Dropped*
Just by this alone, I am happy with my decision!
Yeah!
As for Allan, the downloading of his online videos and his Facebook Games also load up faster too.
Yeah!
So its Double Yeah for Us!
Yes, it has been less than 24 hours with my Fibre Broadband, but I am already LOVING IT!
*wink*
