U Mobile appoints new CEO

U Mobile has announced Dr Kaizad B. Heerjee as their new CEO. He takes over from Kenneth Chang who will continue to serve in the committee.

The new CEO is formerly from PT Indosat as a chief commercial officer. Full news report at Bernama.

[ Source, Press Release ]

U Mobile Prepaid 12 sen/minute Promo but is it really to anyone?

U Mobile has launched a new promo called U3G for prepaid that offers lower 12 sen/minute for voice calls. This is seen as a counter reaction towards TuneTalk‘s low 16 sen/min rate to all numbers.

12 sen/minute seems cheap until you dig deeper into the details.
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U Mobile rides on the World Cup bandwagon

The World Cup fever has begun and we can see loads of brands trying to leverage on the one of the biggest events this year. Our local telcos are in it in a big way too with Maxis leading the way becoming the official mobile broadcaster for the ultimate football event.

U Mobile – a telco that’s still looking to find a strong footing in the local market – has just started a promotion campaign around the World Cup theme. Like DiGi’s Bola! Bola! Bola! campaign there’s really not much value in it for the customers.

The U Mobile U Football Mania campaign is just offering some very generic subscription based content on football trivia and news along with SMS alerts on the latest scores and results from World Cup matches. There’s also some free mobile downloads if you’re interested. Although, we had a look at it and it doesn’t look interesting to us.

We don’t get why telcos see SMS alerts and the like as a feasible business proposition when more and more people are getting their updates for free from social media networks like Twitter.

Very simillar to DiGi, U Mobile is also running a contest that offers free travel to anywhere around the world. The difference here is that it’s not for football fixtures. Still, its something we don’t see adding much value to the subscriber. Apart from Maxis – who will be the first telco in the world to broadcast World Cup matches live to mobile phones – it’s funny how telcos are paying big money to associate themselves to the World Cup but at the end of the day really not giving anything of value to the consumer. We think that’s just a waste of money.

What we would like to see is, for example, a competition where we get to choose a country and if that country makes to the World Cup playoffs we’ll be rewarded with free talk time or a free phone or something – for example. That would be more interesting and fun, not to mention cheaper than paying for trips around the world.

Oh well, that’s just us.

In any case, if you’re interested to find out about the U Football Mania, click here.

U Mobile revamps website

U Mobile has updated its site with a fresh new look. It sure looks a whole lot better than the previous one.

We like the way it looks and how it presents its current products & services.

After the news of U Mobile’s possible new Singaporean stakeholder, we believe that U Mobile could be making a come back this year. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

Singapore’s STT to invest in 33% stake in U Mobile

Struggling 3G Telco, U Mobile has finally gotten into the news again with the announcement of Singapore’s Technology Telemedia to invest 33% stake in the company. U Mobile is majority owned by UTV – U Television Sdn Bhd with Tan Sri Vincent Tan as chairman. The total investment is said to be worth over RM1 billion.

After its bad experience with the Koreans & Japanese, Tan Sri Vincent Tan has clarified that the deal with STT is different from KT Freetel and NTT Docomo. STT does not have an sell-back option if the deal doesn’t go well as planned which was obviously practised by its former strategic partners. The big man said it in his own words, jokingly: “Once bitten, forever shy.”

With this new investment, it will definitely give hope to U Mobile to gain some grounds in the telco industry. In terms of dealers, they have already made in roads nationwide and to date they have captured about 4% of the telco market. What they need now are exciting products and services to stay relevant as the 4th 3G operator in Malaysia.

They have a lot of catching up to do and we look forward for a come back.

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U Mobile 018 celebrates 1st anniversary with 25% top up bonus

While facing possible management shake up, U Mobile still is in the mood to celebrate. From 1st – 12th July 2009, U Mobile 018 prepaid customers will get 25% Extra top up bonus, a 5% extra from its normal 20% top up for its 1st anniversary promotion.

In the FAQ, there’s no limit on how much you can top up to enjoy the extra top up bonus. After 12th of July, the top up bonus will go back to the usual 20%.

More details at their website.

U Mobile’s U Buddy service charges RM10 for Free Calls

Yes, you read that right. U Mobile now offers  U Buddy service at RM10/month to make free calls to all U Mobile numbers. As what FreshGear has written, this isn’t free anymore as postpaid users have to pay extra for it.

Previously, U Mobile offered a time limited promotion to its postpaid customers to make free calls on U Mobile network. Some genius up there tried to spin the promotion around by creating a gimmick by charging and yet calling it free. Instead, they should have called it Unlimited Calls within U Mobile instead of misusing the FREE word. 

To top it off, even the name U Buddy Service sounds weird. Upon hearing this one would think of a bell boy or friend assist. If they ran out of creative juice, they should have name it something as simple as “Unlimited Calls Extra”. 

First they can’t calculate 20% in their online flash game and now this. Somebody should buy them a dictionary and calculator. 

Related Links
U Mobile unveils value added service

U Mobile U10 Plan – Supplementary Plan

U Mobile has finally launched U10 Plan, its first supplementary plan add-on for post paid users. In its typical late fashion, it took U Mobile nearly a year to launch this since its postpaid service launch.  

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KT Freetel Bails out from U Mobile

Look who's calling the shots now

Looks like things can’t get any worse for Malaysia’s worse telco – U Mobile.

Got this feed from Bloomberg.

“KT Freetel Co. (032390 KS): The second-largest South Korean wireless service provider will sell a 16.5 percent stake in Malaysia’s U Mobile Sdn. for at least $100 million to avoid losses on its investment. KT Freetel will sell the 62.6 million shares to U Mobile’s major shareholder, it said. KT Freetel declined 1.1 percent to 26,550 won.”

Barely a year after the investment was finalised, KT Freetel will be selling off its stake in U Mobile to avoid losses.

In addition, NTT DoCoMo has shares in both KT Freetel and U Mobile, and if our experience serves us right, it won’t be long till the Japanese telco pulls out from U Mobile as well.

U Mobile Network is down

This could possibly be the biggest blunder in Malaysian telco history ever (at least to the extent that we can recall lah)!

 Sources deep inside U Mobile confirms with us that the U Mobile network was completely down from as early as 0500hrs this morning (though while crafting this post, the network has been restored). 

At this moment, we can’t gather the cause of this network blackout, but our fingers are pointing at capacity issues within the U Mobile network architecture. This seems to be supported by a frustrated blogger who posted his thoughts on the status of Malaysia’s worse telco here. 

Being observers of the industry, we are subscribers to U Mobile as well as other telcos and we’re appalled at the way the U Mobile communications team is handling this farce. Go to u.com.my and you’ll see no announcement about the network outage, now the network is up there’s no SMS tell customers what happened, no email from customer care explaining what happened. Nothing. 

To U Mobile PR – you owe it to your subscribers to explain to them what exactly happened. And please, no bull, because the smart people out there will soon figure out your bullshit. Tell the truth!

What’s worse is that existing subs can’t even get in touch with U Mobile customer care as the careline is also using the U Mobile network (018 388 1318). We can imagine the predicament of these poor U Mobile subs – they are all left in the dark.

It appears that at U Mobile, there are a lot of sweepers who like to sweep things under the carpet. Well Mr. Oh Kwang Jin, if you don’t see something, it doesn’t mean that that thing doesn’t exist. The managers at U Mobile had better pull their fingers out and start fixing this crap of a mobile company before it’s too late.

Final word: U Mobile sucks! Almost non-existing product range, exceptionally poor customer service and bad everything else makes U Mobile the worse telco in Malaysia –bar none! If you’re thinking of moving to U Mobile – stop thinking about it. You’re better off with any one of the established three telcos.