SHAH ALAM, 28 Sept: The price for internet subscription packages in this country should be reduced because many people are still not able to have the service.
The Bukit Gasing Assemblyman, R Rajiv, said that this is a great disappointment to the people of this country when Malaysia is still behind in broadband access and internet speed.
He said that in Thailand, the cost to subscribe broadband internet is only RM72 (590 Baht) with a speed of 15Mbps compared to Malaysia, RM211 for UniFi with a speed of 10Mbps at home.
“High-speed internet can be found in Malaysia, like TM UniFi (up to 20 Mbps) and Maxis Fiber Internet (speeds up to 100 Mbps). However, due to the high cost, this package is beyond the affordability of Malaysians.
“The Minister of Communications and Multimedia, Datuk Salleh Said Keruak, must be responsible and set a new policy to encourage competition among industry players to be part of the industry which would lead the country to a higher level.
Rajiv said that in the National High Speed Broadband project, only Telekom Malaysia is responsible of being the sole company that owns the country’s broadband infrastructure.
“While UniFi TM that was launched in 2009 is also maintaining the same price. So this framework must be overhauled and introduce more price competition and increase high-speed access,” he said.
He said that Malaysia is ranked 70 in the Akamai State Of Internet Report with an average speed of only 5.0 Mbps.
“Through recent news reports, it revealed that Malaysia is behind Thailand and Sri Lanka.
“Compared to 8.6 Mbps in Thailand (ranked 42) and 12.7 Mbps in Singapore (ranked 14),” he said.
NS
