Disney+ is coming to Malaysia! Finally, we can watch all the #Marvel series legally. Here is the question though, is it worth subscribing to? Especially with all the services we have already subscribed to. Should we fork out extra money for more contents that we might not even watch?
This is #Disney we are talking about though, they are one of the largest entertainment companies in the world, if not the largest. They are going to have more compelling shows in their catalogue. Is this going to be the case of iflix vs. Netflix again though? Who will emerge the victor in the long run? We don’t know yet. Still we discuss about it and more in Tech & Tonic Podcast Season 2 Episode 6.
Our lives today are driven by data. We consume data for our daily lives, and we give out data to gain access to more data. Our data consumption rate and requirement increase everyday too and that is why every other telco in the world wants to move toward 5G speeds and latency.
The amount of data being consumed today has led some local telco in Malaysia to come up with unlimited data plans at capped speeds. This started with UMobile and their prepaid plans. Other started picking up the unlimited data packages to offer to their consumers or potential consumers at capped data speeds. Celcom has been offering differing unlimited data plans to suit different users at different times.
Source: Maxis
The only major telco in Malaysia that has not adopted the unlimited data plan for its prepaid users is Maxis. Until now that is. Maxis Hotlink Prepaid users can finally enjoy unlimited data at reasonable prices.
The largest private telco in Malaysia is offering unlimited data for Hotlink users at speeds capped to 3 Mbps. Of course, you can push the cap a little higher to 6 Mbps should you want to pay a little more.
While 3 Mbps or 6 Mbps may not sound like much, it is fast enough to stream Netflix at 1080p should you get a good signal. YouTube’s buffer screen would be at a minimal to non-existent too at 3 Mbps. If you do think that you need more speed than the capped 3 Mbps or 6 Mbps though you have the option to pay for uncapped speed quotas that will last up to 7 days with your current plans.
Source: Maxis
There are some small caveats to the Hotlink Prepaid Unlimited plans though. We do suggest that you go through their FAQ page to ensure that this is the plan for you and to find out a little bit more about the plan.
Within the FAQ you will find that the “Unlimited” plan is not truly unlimited. You get up to 6MBps of data speeds to work with. That has been dusted, cleared, and covered earlier. Beyond that though, this 6MBps or 3MBps will only be until you used up 50GB in that month. That is if you go for the monthly plan. If you go for a weekly plan, they limit you to 15GB of data usage and 5GB for daily passes. This is accordance to Fair Usage Policy (FUP), according to Maxis.
After you hit the FUP ceiling, you will be knocked back down to Maxis’ free basic internet plan at 512kbps, which is still enough for basic internet browsing in our experience. This plan is only limited to smartphones by the way. If you want to tether or use your smartphone as a hotspot device, you would have to purchase additional data plans.
If you are wondering if you can stream Netflix at Full HD with the limited data speeds, we assure you that you can watch movies at up to Full HD resolution with the 6MBps plan. Technically, Netflix only requires about 5MBps for an HD and Full HD stream. If you want to go for Ultra HD streams, you need about 25MBps of data speeds, but you will not get Ultra HD streams on most smartphone devices anyway.
Source: Maxis
Still, if you want high speed data for your videos on smartphones, Hotlink also has the new Prepaid Video data plan with up to 10GB of data just for YouTube, Viu, iflix, Astro Go, and Tonton. Still, going on the Unlimited Plan (monthly plan) we mentioned earlier gives you a free premium access to Viu for 30 days with Maxis TV, all you have to do is have and active plan and go on the Maxis app to claim the access.
Maxis Hotlink’s Unlimited plan is readily available now for all Hotlink users. Of course, terms and conditions apply. We do suggest you read through the FAQ page to find out what you are getting yourselves into as well. Then again, we suggest that you should read as much as possible about a product before buying it.
