U Mobile in Malaysia Has Been Launched!

The 4th company operating GSM/UMTS mobile networks has officially operating and launched its products in Malaysia this year (post paid service per April 15th 2008). This company supports only UMTS (or well known as 3G) network only (of course it is the benefit of newly launched operator, that is not having to support older network - GSM). Unlike its competitors which already have customers that are using older model of mobile phones that only supports older network, new mobile operators have the benefit of skipping the older (and obsolete) technology.

Previously known as MiTV Networks Sdn Bhd, The U Mobile in many ways provide advanced services, such as automatic detection and settings of mobile device. The network MSC is able to detect and cooperate with the device automatic configuration system to successfully.

The 3G and 3.5G (HSDPA) data connections provide customers with live multimedia streaming experience never experienced before. The 3G (termed 3rd generation GSM network) enabled faster data connection, video teleconferencing, video on demand services.

The company's portal, http://u.com.my/ known to be using JEE Portal technology and Java based Enterprise CMS under the hood. It is obvious when you see the URL of the articles contains the jsession=xxxx such as:

http://u.com.my/umobile/cmportal.portal;jsessionid=ySzHL2JQ80TS223GvghvGCTGJ9HthjnGQRvD95lvJX2yTlqVpR1M!1378328549!-1002006469?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=umobileportal_portal_page_in_the_news

It's good to see a project that you were involved in now goes into production...

Start Ups in Information Technology

When I was on 4th grade undergraduate student, we were thinking of establishing a start-up company in IT. Some of my peers are also having the same vision. In our batch of 50 students there were 2 companies spawned up. Some of our seniors and also some of our juniors have also established start up companies.

That time when we started establishing a company together, we were all fresh graduates, we don't have all the needed knowledge, enough exposures to the industry, no fundings and there were no such focused approach on doing business.

Some of my colleagues at campus were also doing same thing. Some of the companies they setup still survive until today, as well as many have turned belly up. 

Looking into that my past experience on this, I have learnt a lot. Most of them I learnt it the hard way. I was forced to chew on either sweet of bitter dough.

There are multi-dimensional aspects when starting a business. It is not just technical matters. Even if it is technical matters, it's not just IT technical matters!

What really matters is whether the business could produce enough results worth the efforts spent. In order to be able to benchmark this, you have to know the market price.

Another difficulties and problems with partnerships were to determine how many is too much. We started with 3 people then expanded to 9 people. Too many people made it difficult to gain majority vote which translate to more difficult in making decisions. Synchronization of vision and movements might cause some problem too. 

(to be continued)