My Comments on Can Malaysia Get Out Of The Information Black-Hole (by YB Lim Kit Siang)

Refer to ..

Can Malaysia get out of the information black-hole as a result of snail-pace broadband to join the ranks of super-fast broadband nations?

Nothing political here.

I am a Malaysian who lives in Malaysia and uses Streamyx (home and corporate) for many years.

I am a user; customer.

First of all, it is interesting to learn a few things from the blog post of Yang Berhormat Mr.LKS.
  • Internet penetration by user is only 6.1% (per population)
  • Internet penetration by household is over 30%.
  • TM Net owns 75% of market share.
  • In June 2009, 31% fault of customer and the rest was TM Net's fault.
About quality of speed is that TM Net does not have enough International Bandwidth to support its current customer base. And that TM Net has oversold their available International Bandwidth to corporate customers such as the banks and other ISPs such as P1 Wimax. If this is true, then we should all subscribe to P1 Wimax which is still not available near I live, but there is no guaranty of quality of speed as well.

Corporate line is indeed faster.

Some of my telco friends think that the biggest problem is due to the last mile (roll out of fibre optic to users) and not the International bandwidth. TM is pushing for the HSBB and remember our Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Datuk Dr Maximus Ongkili was selling the idea of BBGP. The minister thinks that things will not happen until at least 3 years from now June 2009 and home users can really get around 2 Mbps.

And finally, above all matters, I must emphasize that net neutrality is the most important issue, it is the ultimate freedom.

Last time we have discussed that to solve all these issues, we either need to create more competitions or we need investors.

Investors as in things like Wireless@Penang initiative by Redtone and Hotgate. However, the last time I was in Penang (May 2009), nobody (Penang folks) seems to know,care and excited about it.

Another case study of private investor can be learned from Google. This is already an outdated news, but it shows the meaning of investing. During that period, Google intends to commit at least $4.6 billion to bidding for spectrum in the upcoming 700 Mhz auction.

The reason, which I guessed was because Google needed to protect net neutrality by upholding open Internet platform. Why protect net neutrality ? Because a free country, anything can happen. One day, some Google competitors might buy up some broadband companies and block access to Google.com. That is it, that is big news. Google.com is down for a few hours --> Scary. So Google needs to make sure this doesn't happen.

Will Google invest in Malaysia ? Maybe we need someone to figure out a way which may potentially bring realistic competition to the future of Google.

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