KUALA NERANG, March 29 — Fifty-five rural schools in Kedah have been installed with fibre optic ‘Point of Presence’ (PoP) facilities which can expand broadband infrastructure coverage of the schools involved and the surrounding areas.

Minister of Communications and Digital, Fahmi Fadzil said with the facility, more people in the state, especially in school areas, will get services and access to faster internet.

"This is important for us to reduce what is called a gap or what is called a digital gap. We don’t want a situation where those who live in urban areas get high-speed internet, but those who don’t live in urban areas are left far behind.

"So God-willing this PoP project will help to reduce the gap... besides PoP which is under the phase one implementation is provided outside the school area,” he told reporters after opening the Northern Zone fibre optic PoP hub here today.

He said about 40 per cent of the internet connection ports provided at all PoPs in the 55 schools have been subscribed by users and it is expected that more users will subscribe after knowing the facility.

Fahmi said, many areas where fixed broadband service providers do not have internet connection ports to offer thus making it difficult for users to subscribe to their services.

"But with this PoP programme we provide (the facility) so the cost is reduced for service providers and for users they can get faster broadband services,” he said.

In the meantime, Fahmi said about RM4.6 billion has been allocated to build 4,323 PoPs in areas near rural schools across the country involving two phases of implementation with the first phase starting in 2021 while the second phase started in 2022 until 2025.

Also present at the programme were Ministry of Communications and Digital secretary-general Datuk Seri Mohammad Mentek, Education director-general Datuk Pkharuddin Ghazali and Malaysian National News Agency (Bernama) chief executive officer Roslan Ariffin. — Bernama