The cat is out of the bag! Celcom latest marketing campaign involved a cat as its mascot, but things are not purrfect at Celcom-ville at the moment. Customers have been going at it on social media on how the network strength for 4G has been extremely poor in Klang Valley since last week.

Users took to Celcom’s official Facebook page to complain on drop in signals even in places declared as ‘Celcom Territory’ where it drops to 3G, not welcomed for most data consumers at the moment. One particular user who resides in Puchong was disappointed on the regular drop in signal strength and not able to enjoy 4G for most of the time. MCMC recently published report based on feedback from mobile broadband users placing Puchong a hotspot for insufficient 4G coverage. But the problem for Celcom is not just confined in this area, there are customers in other places who seem to also have been facing poor signal.

Need to note, Celcom network rationalisation exercise is till on going with the operator having yet to completely upgrade its legacy system to the modernised 4G and 4G LTE+ machinery, only a selected location is LTE+ ready at the moment. But this should have been completed in populous areas, Maxis made sure their LTE network was ready in time for migration. After losing over 2 million customers and a change in management, you would have thought brighter days ahead for the telco but looks like the legacy issue is not just confined to electronics alone and maybe much serious. Celcom has dropped from by a leader in the telecommunication industry in Malaysia and a pioneer to number 3 position behind Digi and Maxis.

Journey is going to be long and arduous for Celcom’s CEO, Michael Kuehner and his team until they fix all the niggling issues faced by the operator from network, operation before managing larger matters like perception and expectation.