Maxis #Hotlink Free Internet Prepaid Plan. What’s the Catch?
Maxis Berhad launched #Hotlink free Internet prepaid plan with “always on†Internet connection at 64Kbps. Does it sound too good to be true? What’s the catch?
Read on to learn about Maxis #Hotlink free Internet prepaid plan.
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#Hotlink Free Internet Prepaid Plan
New #Hotlink mobile prepaid plan is RM8.80 comes with RM5 preloaded airtime.
It has 5-day active period upon activation and 50-day deactive period. During the deactive period, you can only receive incoming calls and SMS.
Previously, Hotlink plan had a 30-day active period upon activation and 90-day deactive period.
You need to top-up (example: top up RM14 for 14 days active period) to make calls and SMS. Service will be canceled at the end of the deactive period.
Free basic Internet is active all the time as long as your prepaid plan is active. The download speed is up to 64Kbps (8KB/s).
According to Maxis, 64Kbps is enough to keep yourselves active on social networks:
“Customers can enjoy on basic internet include Whatsapp, Line, WeChat, Facebook, Twitter as well as non-data intensive websites.â€
You can subscribe to optional high speed (up to 42Mbps) mobile Internet plan as low as RM1 per day (1GB for RM30/month).
#Hotlink plan has a flat rate to all networks at 12 sen per 30 seconds and 7 sen per SMS. IDD calls & SMS is possible via Hot IDD 132.
If your total top-up amount every 2 months is RM80 and above, you will receive bonus credit up to RM15.
However, Hotlink Validity 365 (RM33/year) or Validity 90 are not available for #Hotlink plan. Maxis does not allow you to enjoy low maintenance and free basic Internet at the same time.
Where to buy?
You can get the new #Hotlink free Internet prepaid plan at nearest Hotlink Dealer or Maxis Centre. Existing Hotlink customers can dial *108*25#
to upgrade to new #Hotlink plan.
Current Hotlink customers can migrate to new #Hotlink by dialing *108*25#
or dial *100# > Hotlink Specials > Upgrade to New Hotlink Plan
.
You can visit Hotlink.com.my for more information.
How fast is 64Kbps Internet connection?
64Kbps (64 kilobit per second) equals to 8 KiloByte(KB) per second.
It is slightly faster than ancient 56K dial-up modem we were using 15 years ago.
1 MegaByte(MB) is 1024KB. You will need to wait over 2 minutes to download 1MB using 64Kbps download speed. Your “slow†1M broadband connection at home is up to 16x faster than 64Kbps.
I would say #Hotlink basic Internet is GPRS connection, which is slower than EDGE (download speed around 400Kbps). 3G speed is up to 2–3Mbits.
Is 64Kbps usable today?
Old Internet users like us went through the days when 33.6K dial-up connection was considered fast, and 56K was lightning fast. Web page size last time were small, mainly plain HTML files with low resolution images.
Today’s website loads many JavaScript and use big size images. 64Kbps Internet connection is almost not usable.
Both Twitter and Facebook have mobile version of their website, which are smaller download size designed for mobile web browser.
In my test, Twitter mobile site (m.twitter.com) is over 100KB and it will take you over 15 seconds to load. Not too bad. On the other hand, Facebook mobile site (m.facebook.com) is over 600KB on first load. Using 64Kbps download speed, you will need to wait over 1 minute for it to complete loaded.
Thoughts
#Hotlink free internet prepaid plan is good to keep you connected to social networks and instant messenger. Allows your family and friends to contact you via online services while you have no access to WiFi. It is not suitable to download files and load image heavy website.
That’s not a problem for some people. A few of my relatives use smartphone but do not subscribe to mobile data plan at all! They access Internet via the WiFi at home and office, or free WiFi at restaurants.
What do you think?