Barely three days after pledging its patriotism to Malaysia through the corporate advertisements, Maxis Net announced that it is discontinuing its Internet dial-up access service with effect from Oct 31.

It said Maxis Net subscribers could sign up with Jaring ISP for Internet dial-up services.

Queries to Maxis Net invite arrogant responses from the senior management who say there is nothing in the licencing conditions, which dictate Maxis must offer Internet dial-up access services.

If that is the case, industry regulator, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), must suspend Maxis' broadband provisioning licence with immediate effect until it puts back the dial-up service.

Maxis, as an individual licencee, has walked away from its obligation to help Malaysia digitise its economy by offering Internet dial-up service to the consumers it has reached via the cellular segment of telecommunications market.

As a full-suite telecommunications company, it could not cite the lack of last mile coverage as the reason for terminating the Internet dial-up access service. Jaring, a non-telco company, has been providing Internet dial-up access services to help put Malaysia onto the worldwide web.

Against this reality, MCMC will be perceived as shirking its duty if it took no action on its licencee and thereby subject Malaysia's digital vision at the mercy of two dial-up ISPs: TM Net and Jaring.

It also means that MCMC is allowing Maxis to cherry-pick the market segments, instead of helping Malaysia overcome digital divide issues with a shared commitment among individual licensees.

There are several governance issues pertaining to the manner Maxis denied its subscribers the right of choice and opportunities for co-option.

In its email notices to the subscribers recently, Maxis Net justified that "due to this change, Maxis has migrated your original dial-up package plans to Portal Access package at RM7 per month".

All its existing subscribers are required to login to the Maxis Net portal to make payment in order to continue their Portal Access subscription. This is a breach of the terms of service.

When Maxis Net converted the free Internet dial-up service to a paid service priced between RM5 to RM10 per month, consumers subscribed for the dial-up access and not the so-called portal service, which was advertised as a value-added package.

Hence, it is wrong for Maxis Net to make a take-it-or-leave-it offer requiring each customer to pay RM7 per month for such services as 40MB email storage, 30MB photo album services, "free" 70 online SMS, e-cards, 'Heartclicks' match-making and personalisation services.

Maxis Net should know there are serious Internet users among its dial-up subscribers who don't need a photo album or a matchmaking service. They just need a back-up for dial-up as Internet access has been notoriously unreliable in this country.

Maxis Net should also be aware that in city-dwelling apartments that have Maxis as the sole communications service provider, its fibre optics networks disallow ADSL access such as Streamyx to operate technically and commercially. With the termination of Maxis Net Internet dial-up access, these city apartment dwellers are totally cut-off from the Internet.

One such example is the Scott Villa in Kuala Lumpur.