Starhub MaxOnline

I am a hubber and have been a Maxonline subscribers for many years (at least 6years). I can't wait to switch to Singnet the moment my current contract expires in a couple of months. Reasons?

To start off, there will be one less discount (reason) for me to stay on as I am sick of the lousy coverage of Starhub mobile phone network. I can't even get a decent signal strength for making/receiving a call in most part of my estate and many places I frequent (many of these are in town). Once I cancel my mobile contract, I will no longer enjoy the hubber discount.

Secondly, I find the current $56 I paid for the maxonline service too expensive. As I have weaned off online gaming, I don't really need high bandwidth. Besides, it being a shared bandwidth, I am not really even getting close to the indicated 6Mbps (or is it upgraded to 8mbps now?).

Finally, Starhub keeps offering such good deals to new sign up, passing us loyal customers over always. Not only do new subscribers pay a lower price for similar plan but they also get free voice enabled modem for the free land line while we loyal subscribers have to pay for the voice enabled modem for the free land line. I understand the need to entice new customers but pissing off loyal customers really does not make much business sense too.

I have been on MaxOnline Express since 2002. Back then, it was still under Singapore Cable Vision (SCV), before Starhub acquired it sometime later. The reason why my family subscribed to MaxOnline was that my apartment block had just been wired with the "Cable Ready" system at that time, and it was also because of my family wanted to watch World Cup 2002. As we had subscribed to both Cable TV and MaxOnline Broadband together, the additional cable wiring fee to the study room is waived.

Back then, the cable modem was under the 2 year contract as a loan item, so the monthly broadband subscription was around $60-$70 plus. After Starhub bought over SCV, it introduced an “own-your-cable-modem” conversion scheme. That was when the monthly subscription dropped to $56 (w/o GST) as of today and still remains unchanged.

With competition from rivals, Starhub upgraded its cable wiring and hence the gradual speed upgrades from 1.5Mbps to 2 Mbps to 4 Mbps to 6 Mbps and then to 8 Mbps as at present.

The broadband connection over the years is good and as promised an ‘Always On’ status. Its cable offline maintenance is always done off-peak and on a quarterly or half-yearly basis, so it is not a problem.

When my old cable modem became obsolete in late 2007, Starhub offered to trade-in the old modem with the new Motorola SB5101 at a good discounted price of $60 plus at VivoCity.

And just recently, we renewed the contract for another 2 years, enjoying the present promotion of 25% discount. We actually renewed the MaxOnline Express under the Student promotion at 30% discount as my brother is a SIM undergraduate. But the CSO called and said that university students not counted in the Student promotion (but I read the T&C and it did not state so, it only states "tertiary students & NSFs"), and so to make things easier to handle, the CSO renewed the plan at 25% discount and gave me a few thousand Starhub rewards points.

And since my family is under the Hub³ Club membership, there is a further 5% discount.