TM pumping into Sabah RM100m yearly
Published on: Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Kota Kinabalu: Telekom Malaysia ª expects an exciting year ahead with improvement on its high speed broadband (Unifi) now proceeding smoothly.TM Sabah General Manager Sukkuriya Masri said as far as Sabah is concerned, TM was performing well with investments being put in between RM70 million to RM100 million annually.Speaking to the Daily Express, Sukkuriya said one of TM's plans for Sabah was the high speed broadband or Unifi. "We plan to do it in all main towns and already in Kota Kinabalu alone we have 11,000 home passes," he said.
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A "home pass" is a loop of the fibre from the exchanges. For its implementation alone, TM had spent RM40 million, he said. "Of course we are also improving the Streamyx to 8mb but this has got some limitations where the signal will have to be reduced in areas located more than one km," he said.For Streamyx, he said there were about 200,000 pods installed and about 100,000 of them were 8Mb speed. TM is also promoting the IP Protocol Virtual Private Network (IPVPN) to the small and medium enterprise (SMEs) in Sabah. "I think we are the only provider providing IPVPN in Sabah to the SMEs," he said, adding that TM was also providing the service where connection is directly to the internet cloud.
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Sukkuriya said TM would also be connecting 140 more Sabah government offices next month in addition to the 380 offices already connected throughout Sabah through the Sabahnet. About 600 Federal offices had already been connected, including Labuan, under the 1govnet.TM Sabah could now manage its better with more routes being created to link all the major towns in the State "Last time when we started broadband we only had one route because there was only one road from KK to Tawau.
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"We had a lot of problems like the line being cut off by landslides and cut (by cable thieves)."Now we have another what we call the southern link through the Kalabakan-Keningau road that was completed about two to three years ago."Then we also discussed with SESB because apparently they have fibre on their grid. So we use the link to connect KK to Kudat and KK to Tawau as well as to Sandakan. "Now we have three loops interconnecting these areas," he said, adding that with connection also available from Keningau to Tenom and Sitpitang, TM was providing a 99.9 per cent service.This was what TM had been focusing on for the last five years, he said. Sukkuriya also disclosed that the internet submarine cable linking Pahang and KK as well as Pahang to Kuching needed to be replaced as its shelf life would be expiring by next year."This needs a lot of money but we try to get another operator to join in," he said, adding that for land lines, TM has the Transborneo line which connects KK-Lawas-Miri-Kuching."TM was also focusing on the development of wireless telecommunication system, which can be seen through its hefty investment in P1."Its not that we buy their share but we are putting up the money for improving the infrastructure using LTE technology. Even without them (P1) we have already installed a few for testing in some areas."Because I believe there are some areas which we cannot provide with wires because it is very expensive," he said. However, it must be done since the national policy of broadband was to provide penetration "so we want to provide penetration as many as possible." "People are asking why in Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) the connection is very fast but the reason is they only focus on that particular area and in other places they don't have."Whereas in Malaysia we are putting it everywhere. A lot of people don't understand this," he said. As for Wifi, he said 480 stations would be put up in all major towns where the people congregates like in shopping complexes and colleges. "We try to improve on the speed and that's why Unifi is very important," he said. Sukkuriya said TM Sabah is on a journey but it also needs to balance its business that is to respect its shareholders' requirement at the same time the needs of customers who always want the best. "We are glad that for the last three years TM have done very good in term of growth.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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