KUCHING: Instacom Group Bhd is building 300 telecommunication poles to provide cellular phone connectivity to hundreds of longhouses and settlements in interior Sarawak and Sabah.
The telecommunication engineering firm is the contractor for the Maxis Clawback Femto and Nano project funded by a RM200mil allocation from Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).
The fund is tapped from MCMC Universal Service Programme set up to provide telecommunication services in the rural areas. Telecommunication companies contribute 6% of their revenues to finance the programme.
Under the newly rolled-out initiative, a total of 600 such tele-communication poles are to be put up. These facilities also benefit schools.
Instacom executive director Thomas Ngu Sing Hieng said several of the telecommunication poles were operational, and the entire project would be completed before year-end.
The poles are 9m in height and installed with either femto or nano cells, which are sophisticated tools for signal recovery.
“Femto cell technology is used for poles to serve longhouses or settlements with more than 1,000 people each,” he told The Star after a media briefing here yesterday.
Chief executive officer Anne Kung gave the briefing on Instacom, which has completed a reverse takeover of Bursa Malaysia ACE Market-listed I-Power Bhd. Instacom will be quoted and traded from next Monday.
As a full turnkey solution provi-der, Instacom’s services include radio network planning and opti-misation, in-building radio frequen-cy design and implementation, equipment installation, commis-sioning and integration, infrastructure products and works, preventive and corrective maintenance as well as project management.
Ngu said for longhouses and settlements without electricity supply, these telecommunication poles would be powered by solar energy to be provided.
“Instacom will provide a three-year maintenance for these telecommunication poles,” he added.
In Sabah. Ngu said Instacom had built 17 telecommunication towers in Keningau in collaboration with state-owned Common Tower Technologies Sdn Bhd under MCMC Time3 programme to bring connectivity to rural areas.