MCMC will not implement equal access by pre-selection

Cyberjaya, December 4 2004 - The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) today issued a Public Consultation Report on the Implementation of Pre-selection. The report sets out the MCMC's decision not to implement pre-selection in Malaysia. According to MCMC's Head of Corporate Communications, Adelina Iskandar, "Market liberalisation new technologies has resulted in a competitive market environment where consumers have plenty of choices that are close substitutes to the services offered via pre-selection." Considering that the benefits to consumers are limited, while the cost to industry is considerable, the MCMC is of the view that consumers' interest would be better served if the cost of implementing pre-selection is spent on other emerging technologies. As explained further by Adelina, "Pre-selection is considered as a progression towards competition compared to call-by-call as end users do not have to dial a prefix each time a call is made. Instead, end users can select service providers in advance by signing an agreement with that service provider to have certain classes of calls to be automatically routed via the network of the said service provider." However, call-by-call Equal Access (EA) that was implemented on 1 January 1999 will continue to be in place. EA is a facility that is offered to end users who are directly connected to one operator to choose another operator to carry certain defined classes of calls. There are two forms of EA, namely call-by-call and pre-selection. Call-by-call refers to a situation where end-users are required to dial a prefix or carrier selection code of the service provider that they have subscribed to, each time they make a call. In the Malaysian context, EA is applicable to basic PSTN long distance and international calls which includes voice telephony, facsimile communication; and Centrex services.