PUTRAJAYA, July 6 — The progressive efforts of the Malaysian government in uplifting the country’s telecommunications sector have been recognised by the World Bank in its latest report on Malaysia Economic Monitor: Re-energising 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. — Bernama