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Would it be worthwhile to condier the consumer's ultimate weapon - their purchasing power?

What if there was a petition denouncing the repeated failure of the SMS voting system as implimented by Dapat Vista and accepted by 8TV, coupled with the big stick of a call for a boycott of any future SMS contest involving the two unless they adequately apologise, account for and compensate those who were the victims of their recent failure?

If there is large enough support for such a boycott, then I think Dapat Vista and 8TV will have to listen.

That being said, may I reiterate that personally, I would not take part in any SMS voting scheme to pick the winners of talent search contests, given that the winner is often not picked for his or her talent. So sad that those contestants who are really talented may face losing while the producers laugh all the way to the bank!

KTAK should ban all future SMS contest unless the organiser provide FREE SMS route. period.

"We hope the telecommunication companies will widen their pipeline in future"

It seems the one to blame is the 3 mobile operator,their probably didnt buy enough licensed for SMS to handle the surge of SMS transaction?
How they manage to handle Academi Fantasia and American Idol, or New Year 12am SMS cheers.

Dapat Vista will have to refund? not the mobile operator, doesnt make sense to me. yet.

tiredguy,

I beleive voting for AF and American Idol i beleive (correct me if i'm wrong) is done over a 24 Hr period, at least American Idol is for the same reason that we see the bottleneck here.

As for why DAPAT has to do the refund, it's because it is the service provider, running on the operator's pipe. They have a revenue share agreement with each operator for the service.

However, my concerns are:
1) I want to see a report from all parties as to where the bottleneck came from? It could have come from:

1) Dapat's 3PP apps could not take the load
2) Poor link between DAPAT and 3 operators
3) SMSC overload within the operator

Then we should know which area to look!

You must know that it's impossible to be "ready" for surge of traffic like this! You can create a 5K MPS pipe just for a once a year event? It doesnt make sence ...

the capacity some of operators ahve are good enough to handle most traffic but the problem is in the way the program was developed ....no one ever thought if we could do it in 2 hours or so ..voting time!

To me, that was ridiculous, the business case of the program ...they never did their homework to understand the capacity of the system...if they did, they would havw known better what they can do and what they cant!

I would have my reservation to put blame on the Telco's!

As for the New year surge in SMS traffic...yes....even with the current traffic loads...year in and year out ...there is a lag in new year messages....it doesnt fail but there is a lag ...hence your message still goes through...perhaps a few minutes late ..

int his case...u get error message..so highly likely it comes from item 1 or 2 above!

hola!

While AF may open its voting 24hrs, the biggest surge (80% of votes) was right after each "live" show. So you can discount the 24-hour voting as the key differentiator from ye prognosis.

As to how they managed to do it, remember my earlier post on the topic where i used the analogy of running a race on the federal highway at 8.30am?? Well, imagine if you had cops clearing a lane for your race beforehand and managing existing traffic accordingly.. get the idea? How the "lane" is cleared... haa.. that one, gets technical and I would def not want to bore folks here.. lets just say, its been done before and CAN be done - not rocket science. :)

Why is DAPAT handling the refund? Now, thats interesting indeed. Normally, if the amount is large, the telco's will handle but if the numbers are small, they would pass the buck on to the CP's to handle it. This kindda makes me wonder - how much traffic were really impacted by this fiasco?

Goks,
May I know, whats your basis of blaming the 3rd party service provider, huh?? Seriously.
Implying just cause you got the error message means it's a lack of handling by DAPAT (in terms of apps or connectivity) is both naive and shows a lack of understanding of the end-to-end connectivity as practiced in the Malaysian environment.

Bottleneck.. perhaps? Server crash.. maybe? Loose cable.. unlikely? Tremendous queue... possibly? Billing gateway failure... probable? Fact is - we do not know for sure. Though we can speculate.. and thats just it.. speculation. :) DAPAT are dependant on the MO from telco's - if the MO came after the stipulated time, its suppose to respond accordingly. From the looks of it, the telco's had a problem delivering these MO's as there was a telco-originated error message to begin with. Now this fact, I know for sure and it ain't no speculation. :)

Poor link between DAPAT and Telco's? These are links tested and sanctioned by the telco's per their standards (which btw is in accordance with global connectivity protocols).

Btw, I do not work for DAPAT. :D Just like to ensure, misconception through misperception do not lead to misunderstanding without the facts being realized.

that day i send SMS to bonuslink to get the Sticker. But it is not working, yet they charge me RM0.30. i sent another time, also fail. I even log in to Bonuslink.com.my to confirm the number and it is correct.

From the comments from 8TV it would mean that there is no genuine winner for OIAM contest as many votes were not accounted for. The second and third placed contestents should dispute the official results.

I believe goks and nav conversations were a bit blurred for those who is not in the telco and SMS line of business. Here, I have attached a document for the benefit of all commenters.

A Study In Mobile Messaging

If you are charged the premium rate, that means the SMS you sent reached DAPAT.

There were two unsuccessful messages:

"E1001: Sorry, your request has not been successful. Please try again later"

and

"(RM0.50) OIAM: Sorry, voting has been closed. Thank you."

The former, I believe is originated from the telcos when the system (telco system) found that their pipe line cannot handle the traffic (have not reached DAPAT). Correct me if I'm wrong please, goks and nav.

The latter, is from DAPAT. Only the voting application will know closing time. Telcos and the SMSC wouldn't know, they were only responsible for relaying the messages as soon as their systems can handle.

It is possible the message queued at the telcos too long before it reached DAPAT.

Not forgetting there is an SMS Center (SMSC). All messages are routed to this center before DAPAT. So the bottle neck could be there, too.

Well, as a contrary, it is also possible the messages reached longed and queued at DAPAT's application, and by the time it process the vote, the voting time is already closed (if those messages where not timestamped, which I think very unlikely).

In summary, there were three possible places there the traffics were hogging,

1. At the telcos
2. At the SMSC
3. At the Voting Apps of DAPAT

Since they ALL makes up the entire system. They all have to upgrade, the pipe lines of the telcos, the SMSC gateways, and the DAPAT voting system.