Media & Events

Transforming Malaysia into global telecom hub

19 May 2003, Rozana Sani, Computimes, New Straits Times
If one were to talk about the local telecommunications landscape some five years ago, the discussion would probably centre around fixed telephone line penetration, voice-based services, quality of service and the disparate telecommunications coverage in the country. While some of the issues still remain, the landscape has radically evolved today. With the convergence of information and communications technology (ICT), telecommunications in Malaysia has definitely become “sexier” with considerable interest and progress made in areas like broadband and wireless communications services. According to industry regulator, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), the convergence has opened up a whole new marketplace for players in the sector – both old and new – fuelling growth for the sector despite the present gloomy economic outlook. In fact, both players and regulators are striving to make headways in establishing the right climate and condition to develop Malaysia as a global hub for communications and multimedia services, says MCMC chairman Tan Sri Nuraizah Abdul Hamid. Through synergistic efforts with industry players, MCMC is progressing well towards its aim to establish a competitive, efficient and increasingly self-regulated communications and multimedia industry to meet the economic and social needs of the country, she says. Measures to bring the vision into place are already taking place based at present on the Framework for Industry Development (FID) 2002-2006 produced by MCMC – a review of the first set of industry guidelines that took place in June last year. “With the changes that are taking place, we are providing and consolidating a stabilising effect of which results will only be seen in a later phase,” Nuraizah says. “We are establishing the groundwork to facilitate technology convergence and cross-sectoring activities, which are expected to blossom some two years down the road.” National Broadband Plan - One of the key initiatives MCMC is undertaking is to upgrade network capabilities that form the very basis of a communications and multimedia hub envisioned. This includes efforts to expedite the development of a National Broadband Plan, which is targeted to be in place this year. “While we talk about becoming a global hub, becoming a regional hub is still a challenge. Through discussions, we have concluded that rolling broadband at national level is the key,” Nuraizah explains. “However, we realised that there is minimal broadband service in Malaysia and we have commissioned a consulting team to do an analysis of the present situation that would contribute to our proposal for the broadband plan.” She informs that the Energy, Communications and Multimedia Ministry is currently doing another phase to the study because there are certain information still not available. “Once that is done, they will go to the Government to propose a National Broadband Plan. There will be financial implications with sources of fund among the issues involved. In the next few months, there will be a proposal." Also under upgrading network capabilities is the implementation of domestic roaming in all identified areas under the Domestic Roaming Plan this year. “Mobile service providers have outperformed the initial target of having 38 per cent penetration by 2005, with the penetration already reaching 40 per cent this year,” Nuraizah states. “In terms of capacity, the consolidation of the mobile service providers is an important development – from five to three. That will strengthen further the provision of mobile service.” Digital Terrestial Television Broadcast - MCMC is also going in a big way to introduce Digital Terrestial Broadcasting (DTTB) in order to boost ICT access as television has a higher penetration rate than telephone, either fixed or mobile. “The public inquiry paper is being prepared and will be completed soon. With that, we hope to bring some positive changes to our broadcasting sector because going digital is very important. The DTTB proposal will provide a phasing in of digital and phasing out of analogue services via television which is an important development,” Nuraizah says. At Press time, the Public Consultation Paper on DDTB is already available for public viewing through the MCMC Web site (www.mcmc.gov.my). With regards to improving service quality, MCMC has introduced the Quality of Service benchmark for fixed, mobile, Internet service provision and broadcasting. “We are expecting the first six months’ results by August. If the quality do not come to the level expected, there will be penalties involved,” Nuraizah says. Other than ensuring consumers enjoy a satisfactory level of services at affordable price, MCMC is also working towards making sure users enjoy a wide choice of high quality content and application services. This, of course, highlights the issue of a severe lack of local content, she points out. “We have commissioned a comprehensive study on the network content industry. We need to know how can we go forward, what are the weaknesses, where are the weaknesses, and what do we need in order to energise the content industry to go forward,” Nuraizah says. “Infrastructure is meaningless if we don’t have our own content and at present the activities in the content industry is minimal,” she says, adding that the strategic network content study that is due to be completed this year will point ways to increase local content revenue. With so many activities in the communications and multimedia sector, MCMC is putting emphasis on managing resources efficiently – especially in spectrum utilisation. The commission is targeting to release and fully implement the National Spectrum Policy soon. Nuraizah says the commission is in the process of taking it to the Cabinet because there are some implications in terms of finance especially for Government agencies. Other than spectrum utilisation, MCMC is also working on an electronic addressing and numbering utilisation initiative that is now going through second consultative round with the industry. The initiative is aimed at developing effective systems and frameworks for numbering management that are able to address both current and future needs of the country and the industry. “Industry players are very much worried about the issue of number portability, which allows a phone subscriber to change to a new service provider without giving up his or her number. This has severe financial impact as customer loyalty will dwindle down as changing numbers is no longer an issue, “ Nuraizah says. “Also numbers are a finite resource, hence, we want to make it more valuable. We don’t want people to give it up as and when they like. There has to be a plan to manage this,” she says. MCMC, she adds, hopes to introduce the phasing in of a numbering and electronic addressing system by year-end. A registry-registrar model for electronic addressing and a management systems to support numbering and electronic addressing are expected to be deployed as well.
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