A visit to Packet Hub, HQ of WIMAX provider Packet One

Being one of the contributors in a committee of a local business association, I am honoured to be invited by Michael Lai (赖敬达), CEO of Packet One, to visit their HQ building Packet Hub today.

I was really amazed by the presentations by Michael and his senior staff, which show that this young company has very clear and ambitous mission, vision, direction and goals.

Since the debut of their P1 W1MAX service in August 2008, which was just one year ago, the company has grown exponentially in terms of service coverage area, user base (now already reaches 100,000) as well as staff force (more than 600 now). Packet One is no doubt the pioneer and still the only WIMAX service provider in Malaysia, despite 4 WIMAX licenses have been awarded by MCMC several years ago.

Located at Jalan Templer next to the Federal Highway, the Packet Hub building implements some of the Google-like working environment which can especially attract the Gen-Y workers.

Near the entrance is a Paddock which showcase their products and services. Their customer service area is just next to the P1 Paddock.

They have modern looking meeting rooms named by countries with their presence, equipped with high tech meeting equipments and high quality chairs. They also have a nice well equipped gymnasium, a rest room with several massage chairs and a comfly gamers room. On the roof top of the building is an air garden with nice landscaping and a BBQ area. There is also a WIMAX base station on top of the building (in the photo).

Apparently Michael is a fan of What Would Google Do (WWGD)?, a book written by Jeff Jarvis. He shared with us about his business philosophy, his view of technology future particularly in the IP field, his ambition and market positioning of Packet One, and more. He talked about Business 2.0, a new term that I just know about today.

It seems that Green Packet has made a right choice to get Michael joining them to start up the P1 business. Michael has sound track record while he was with Celcom and later as CEO of TMNet before joining Packet One. Undeniably, he has always been very good in branding strategy all the way from his previous companies till now in P1.

Keeping employees engaged in tough times

In September 2009 edition of the Baseline Magazine, an article by Corinne Bernstein reviews the key attributes of how the best-of-the-best companies keep their employees engaged, especially when in tough times, which are:

• A compelling, positive vision with clear goals: essential for increasing morale, motivation and productivity.
• Communication—the right stuff at the right time: encourage employees to express opinions, and managers relay the organization’s perspective in a timely manner.
• Select the right people for the right job: hire the most qualified candidates for jobs, and promote qualified, well-trained people into management positions.
• Remember that we’re on the same team: value team work within and across departments.
• Cool stuff—continuous improvement and innovation: encourage and recognize employees to improve quality by creating new products, processes or services.
• Recognize and reward excellent performance: appropriately reward the highest achievers.
• Accountability counts: clearly define what is expected from employees, providing feedback on their performance and holding team members accountable to performance standards.
• Every employee learns and grows: provide good training programs that are relevant to both the workers’ and the organization’s success.
• Problems are no problem: identifies and handles problems early on.
• It’s all about the customer: place a high value on exceeding customer expectations.
  

If you are interested to read the full article, you can click here to download the softcopy version of Baselin Magazine September 2009 Edition. It is in Page 12.

UBS Price and Earnings Report 2009

The renowned global financial services firm UBS has just released their "Price and Earnings 2009 - A comparison of purchasing power around the globe" report, covering their studies on living cost (including prices for 122 type of goods & services), as well as wages, working hours & taxes for 14 professions in 73 cities worldwide. Since 1971, UBS conducts this survey covering more than 30,000 individual data points at the interval of every 3 years.

The result reviews that:

• Oslo, Zurich, Copenhagen, Geneva, Tokyo and New York are the world's most expensive cities based on a standardized basket of 122 goods and services, while Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Delhi and Mumbai cost the least.
• When rent prices are factored into the equation, New York, Oslo, Geneva and Tokyo emerge as especially pricey places to live.
• Employees in Zurich and Geneva have the highest net wages in the world. By contrast, the average employee in Delhi, Manila, Jakarta and Mumbai earns less than 6.66% or 1/15 of Swiss hourly wages after taxes.
• An average wage-earner in Zurich and New York can buy an Apple iPod nano with 8GB storage after 9 hours (or 1 working day) of work. At the other end of the spectrum, workers in Mumbai, need to work 20 working days – roughly the equivalent of one month's salary – to purchase the same.
• People work an average of 1,902 hours per year in the surveyed cities but they work much longer in Asian and Middle Eastern cities, averaging 2,119 and 2,063 hours per year respectively.
• People in Cairo and Seoul work the longest – roughly 600 hours more per year than their peers in Western Europe. People in Lyon and Paris, by contrast, spend the least amount of time at work.
• Japan and Switzerland has the highest food price.
• Nowhere in the world is clothing cheaper than in Kuala Lumpur and Manila.
• Hotels most expensive in Tokyo and Paris.
• The costliest places for city break are Tokyo, London and Doha while the cheapest are Mexico City, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta.
• Crisis-driven currency fluctuations cause shifts in the rankings from last survey (year 2006).

Beside the Apple iPod nano, price of McDonald's Big Mac, 1kg bread and 1kg rice are also benchmarked for the purchasing power in the cities (refer to Page 11 of the report).

Wages and working hours are benchmarked among the following professions:

• Car mechanic
• Building labourer
• Skilled industrial worker
• Factory worker
• Engineer
• Department head
• Product manager
• Primary school teacher
• Bus driver
• Cook
• Personal assistant
• Sales assistant
• Call center agent
• Bank credit officer

Click here to download the full UBS Price and Earnings Report 2009.

You might also be interested to read about:

Mercer Worldwide Cost of Living Survey 2009