This article appeared in SoyaCincau on 4 October 2022.

You might not have heard of the telco Altel, but they actually are one of the minor service provider here in Malaysia. However, if you’re one of the dozens currently using an Altel prepaid line, you should know that the company is set to exit the market. In a statement posted on their website and their social media, Altel states that they wish to inform customers that the Altel Prepaid service will be terminated effective 31 December 2022.

Altel prepaid customers will be given a number of choices on how to continue forward, with the first being migrating their Altel number to Celcom—this isn’t a surprise considering that Altel Prepaid is an MVNO that uses Celcom’s network. You’ll also be able to request for credit balance refund from today onwards till the end of November. To request for a refund and migrate to Celcom, you can click here to head to Altel’s website.

Alternatively, Altel users also have the option of terminating their number altogether. If they do so, they can request for a refund of their credit balance from now till the end of November. If for whatever reason you want to terminate your line without requesting for a credit balance refund, you will need to contact Altel Customer Care at 1300-13-3888 instead. Otherwise, you can click here to head to Altel’s website to terminate your number and initiate your credit balance refund.

Lastly, you will also have the option to port out your current Altel number to another telco. However, you will need to do so by the 15th of November 2022. Furthermore, if you port out your number, you will not be eligible for a credit balance refund. You should also note that if you don’t do any of the above, your Altel number will automatically be migrated to Celcom on the 1st of December 2022, and you also won’t get a credit balance refund.

Currently, with Altel pulling out of the retail market, it looks like they’ll be mostly focusing on the enterprise scene instead. Looking at their website, they still appear to offering corporate networking and IoT solutions, as well as enterprise-level cloud solutions. They were also awarded the 2600MHz spectrum by the MCMC but they have since leased to Digi and Celcom for 4G LTE services.