By Sabry Tahir
The Star
The Government is confident of achieving 1.3 million broadband subscribers by the end of the year, said Energy, Water and Communications Minister Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik. He said the target was possible to achieve if the broadband service providers were able to provide services at a lower price.“We have often requested the service providers to be more aggressive in their pricing so as to attract more users,” he said yesterday at the launch of the MyICMS 886 workshop on broadband for all Malaysians.
Lim said experience in other countries had shown that price was the single biggest driver of broadband penetration.“A more competitive pricing will attract more users and lead to higher utilisation of network facilities and hence higher revenue for service providers.
''Lim said to further drive the penetration rate, service providers should raise broadband speed to a minimum of two megabits per second (MBps) per user.
“We have Internet access but no speed. I think 2MBps per user is very reasonable,” he said, adding that countries like South Korea had achieved 100MBps and was going for 300MBps.
Lim said the ministry would keep pushing telecommunications operators to raise broadband speed in the future, including encouraging them to upgrade infrastructure like replacing copper wire with fibre optic.
“Fibre optic is the best way to achieve high-speed broadband,” he added. As part of the push to increase broadband penetration, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) launched the MyICMS 886 in December last year.
MCMC is targeting for household broadband penetration to reach 25%, or 1.3 million subscriber lines, by year-end from the 600,000 lines currently in service.
The agency is also targeting a 50% broadband penetration rate for households by 2008.
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