This news struck me as a surprise, and was relatively quietly announced - I didn’t get to know about it until someone told me recently.

Apparently, TM is the lead player in a consortium to implement an Asia-US submarine cable, formed by AT&T Inc. (USA), Bharti AirTel (India), Government of Brunei Darussalam (Brunei), British Telecom Global Network Services (UK), CAT Telekom (Thailand), Eastern Telecommunications Philippines Inc. (Philippines), Indosat (Indonesia), Pacific Communications Pte Ltd (Cambodia), Philippines Long Distance Telephone Co. (Philippines), PT Telkom (Indonesia), Saigon Postal Corporation (Vietnam), StarHub (Singapore), Telstra (Australia), Telecom New Zealand International (New Zealand), Viettel (Vietnam) and Vietnam Post & Telecommunications Group of Vietnam (Vietnam).

The cable is called the AAG, or Asia America Gateway. The AAG will provide a seamless direct link between the US and other Asian countries via one single cable. It also has the ability to be expanded to Australia, India, Africa, and Europe. Spanning over 20,000 km, AAG will link Malaysia to the US via Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and the West coast of the US. The cable system is designed to provide a capacity of up to 1.92 Terabits per second of data bandwidth.
It will have an initial capacity of 480Gbps.

TM holds 9% in the equity of the project (majority shareholder). The contract is worth approximately $US500 Million. (Which means TM’s 9% equity is $US45 million / RM157million).

A quote from CEO, Datuk Abdul Wahid Omar: “While we are present in 13 countries in the region and involved in seven existing major submarine cable consortiums, this initiative is still one of the biggest we have undertaken. It will provide TM with additional 60Gbps of capacity, which will help reduce any future potential congestion we may face.”

Another quote: As the AAG is from a single cable network, not only will it have improvements in lowering latency, it will also simultaneously ramp up the international bandwidth capacity to Malaysia at more competitive costs.”

“This impressive joint-effort will go a long way in increasing broadband uptake in this region, which will in turn increase the overall appeal for global investments and increase the competitiveness of the countries benefiting from direct links to the Asia-America Gateway,”

Analysis: Assuming this goes well, Malaysia will surpass Singapore and Thailand in being a regional hub. That means, just like how Malacca was a hub for international trade in the days of yore, Malaysia could be come a hub for international traffic.

Congratulations TM! Let’s hope this happens soon, and that we can see some speed improvements by early next year. My internet connection is getting slower as of late…and from the news article, this project is scheduled to be completed only by December 2008…

You can read more here, on IT Wire, or on TM’s press release section on its official website.

The Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission has released a mandatory standard for Quality of broadband service in Malaysia starting 1 January 2008.

Here are the conclusions(Applies to all ISPs):

• 80% of installation orders must be fulfilled within 24 hours from the time and date requested by the customer.
• 80% of service restoration must be completed within 24 hours from the time and date requested by the customer.
• 90% of billing complaints must be resolved in 15 business days of receipt of the complaint.
• Network latency to the nearest edge node(BRAS), shall be no more than 85ms(95% of the time)
• Bandwidth utilisation between the user and the nearest edge node of the regional broadband network(BRAS) should be no less than 80% of the subscribed level(95% of the me)-it means local sites will load faster
• Packet loss should not exceed 1% between the user and the nearest edge node of the regional broadband network(BRAS)

BRAS-Broadband Remote Access Server

On top of all theses mandatory standards, all ISPs must produce a report to MCMC every six months.

Mandatory Standards for Quality of Service(Broadband Access Service)-PDF file

The question is:

• What if the customers are still not satisfied on the service offered? (MCMC will be judging the service based on the report produced by the ISPs, what about consumers?)
• Do I still pay RM77 when service is always not available, or when the technical guy is taking his sweet time to come over to my place?
• What happens to the ISPs if the mandatory standards are not fulfilled?
• Why “best effort” still remains? Does MCMC support these terms?
• Why wait until January,2008? Does it mean that we will suffer until then and no action can be taken on the ISP?

Comments are most welcomed.

Update: You can read more on this at : http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/486176

“They see the pennies instead of the pounds, losing sight of the ‘pot of gold’ in the distance. They are interested only in making profits and protecting their investments, putting the future of the whole industry in jeopardy,” he said.

Read the full article at The Star Online Tech Central

“This development brings the advantages and pervasiveness of the GSM platform to the notebook market, where sales of more than 60 million laptops have been forecasted worldwide this year,” he said in a statement.

Read the full article at The Star Online Tech Central

“Unbundling of the local loop or “last mile” has long been seen as a key trigger that will spark a surge of supply by new service providers to fill broadband demand, at price consumers are willing to pay.”

Read the full article at The Edge Daily

To ensure that it happens, Dr Lim told reporters later at the event that he was prepared to take drastic action such as unbundling the local loop to boost competition.
“I don’t care who it hurts,” he said, vowing again to make it “fast and cheap.”

Read the full article at BrandMalaysia.com

Repeating the phrase again and again while speaking at the launch of the Malaysian Research and Education Network here on Monday, Energy, Water and Communications Minister Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik said he has made it his “mission” to boost Malaysia’s abysmal broadband penetration rate.

The rate currently stands at about 1% of the population.

“Ten months ago (when I was appointed Energy, Water and Communications Minister) it was 0.4%,” said Dr Lim, expressing his disappointment at the “small improvement.”

He pointed out that while Malaysia went on a concerted ICT (information and communications technology) drive much earlier than many countries in the region, countries such as Singapore and South Korea had far greater broadband penetration rates.

“You tell me what’s wrong here,” he said.

Read the full article at The Star Online : TechCentral

The local loop is telco industry lingo for the telephone infrastructure that connects all homes and offices. Telekom controls more than 95% of the local loop in Malaysia, and just like all incumbents around the world, is extremely reluctant to share access with competitors. This represents a huge barrier to new players because it will be a very costly and time-consuming affair to lay a similar or alternative infrastructure, hence, difficult to make a business case.

…Malaysia was among the first countries in Asia to introduce the Internet commercially, through Jaring in 1994. And in 1996, we were arguably the earliest to recognise information and communications technology as a future engine of growth by way of the launch of the Multimedia Super Corridor. Thus, it is all the more painful that we are so far behind in the rollout of one key infrastructure, broadband, that will enable the nation, its companies and citizens to compete and win in this increasingly borderless and competitive knowledge economy.

Read the full article at TheEdgeDaily