Online traffic hampers phone rebate registration

With the government’s smartphone rebate scheme now in its fourth day, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) website, where registration for the scheme is taking place, is still overcongested.

This is despite the website being taken down for maintenance at 11pm every night, until 7am the following day, since the program started on Jan 1.

Sinchew Daily today quoted an unnamed MCMC official saying that the congestion was due to “tens of thousands of youths” swarming the website since the RM500 cap for eligible smartphones was removed.

The official also reportedly said that the RM200 rebate scheme was originally aimed at helping rural youths bridge the digital divide, but the lift of the RM500 cap has drawn urban youths into the fray.

“As a result, only a small portion of the 1.5 million beneficiaries of the scheme are believed to be rural youths, due to the advantage of better connectivity (for urban youths),” he was quoted saying.

He also reportedly said that as of noon yesterday, over 20,000 youths have registered and believes that the remaining allocation would be exhausted within weeks.

Netizens vent frustrations online

Meanwhile, netizens sought advice on beating the network traffic and vented their frustrations on online forums, including one popular Lowyat.net forum.

“Rubbish MCMC website. Stupid government spent huge amounts of money to advertise in newspapers, stating that our country has 75 percent of its citizens using the Internet.

“But its own MCMC website can’t even afford five percent of citizens to log in and do a simple registration. Rubbish MCMC website, and thanks to rubbish MCMC maintenance or IT staff” said one posting by the user ‘sctan1986’.

Another user, ‘aspire2006’, concurred, saying “Maybe the website’s budget is RM500,000 but the actual cost is RM200.

“Yesterday I tried so hard to put my own information, (and it said) ‘sila tunggu’ for the whole day, loading and loading, but nothing happened.

“Then today I tried (again and the) website can’t (be accessed),” he posted this morning.

Some netizens reported waiting up to an hour for their forms to be submitted, to no avail, while others traded advice on which browsers to use and whether the connection should be encrypted with the HTTP-Secure protocol.

Regardless, no clear solution appears to be in sight.

Malaysiakini staff’s repeated attempts to register for the rebate, since Jan 2, is similarly unsuccessful.

Most attempts to reach the website were either refused or ‘timed-out’, the latter meaning that the server has unable to respond to the connection request after some time.

‘Please try again’

Once connected, users are directed either to forms for working adults, or for those still studying. There is also a list of authorised service providers, list of conditions for eligibility and a ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ list.

The registration process itself is split into four steps, asking for the applicant’s personal details, employer’s details, Employee’s Provident Fund account number (for working adults) and Student ID number (for students).

It also asks whether the applicant already has a data plan and the location address of the applicant’s Facebook page, although the latter is optional.

On the final step, applicants are asked to confirm their details, warning that it is an offence under Section 193 of the penal code to provide false information, and violators may face up the three years in jail and a fine.

However, once the applicant confirms the submission, they may be told that the application is being processed and asks the applicant to wait, apparently in perpetuity.

Alternatively, an error message may pop-up, followed by a dialog box that reads “Thank you”.

Applicants may also be greeted with a message that reads, “Your application could not be processed at this time, please try again. Sorry”.