PUTRAJAYA,
July 6 — the progressive efforts of the Malaysian government in uplifting the
country’s telecommunications sector have been recognized by the World Bank in
its latest report on Malaysia Economic Monitor: Re-energizing the Public
Service which was published on June 30 2019.
The
Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) in a statement today
said, one of the articles in the report entitled “Malaysia’s need for speed:
How regulatory action is unleashing ultrafast internet” acknowledged the
initiatives undertaken by the commission in support of Communications and Multimedia Minister Gobind
Singh Deo who minted the ‘Double the speed, half the price’ mantra as the
guiding principle in providing affordable fixed broadband services with faster
internet connections.
MCMC
Chairman Al-Ishsal Ishak said, the World Bank report was a testament of the
effectiveness of initiatives, policies, and actions implemented by MCMC.
“As a regulator of the communications and multimedia industry,
our aim is to ensure that the standard
of connectivity nationwide can unlock added-value to the people as well as
catalyse strong and sustainable economic
growth for the country,” he added.
“The implementation of Mandatory Standard on Access Pricing
(MSAP) by MCMC in October 2018 produced an average of 49 per cent reduction in
the prices of high-speed broadband services,” the statement added.
Prior
to the price reduction, said MCMC, prices of entry level packages ranged from
RM119 to RM129 for 10 Megabits per second (Mbps). With MSAP, the prices of
entry level packages ranged from RM79 to RM89 for 30Mbps.
In
addition, the number of fixed broadband subscriptions with download speeds of
more than 100 Mbps grew by a factor of eight to 1.2 million subscribers in
2018, from 150,000 in 2017, it added.
MCMC
further said, in terms of accessibility, the World Bank article outlined that
Malaysia was well poised in closing the gap between leading countries with
respect to internet speed.
It
was worth to note that Malaysia’s average fixed broadband speed had accelerated
more than three-fold in 17 months, from 22.5 Mbps in January 2018 to 68.5 Mbps
in May 2019, above the global average of 59.6 Mbps.
Under
the National Fiberisation and Connectivity Plan (NFCP), MCMC had planned to
improve affordability, quality and accessibility of digital connectivity as a
pathway for the country to usher the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0) that
brought with it disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence,
robotics, big data, and virtual engineering, the statement further said.
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