Malaysia’s TIME dotCom has posted a net loss of MYR40.1 million (USD10.9 million) in the second quarter, compared with a MYR55.7 million loss in the year-ago period, on the back of cost cutting initiatives leading to lower sales costs and operating expenses. Revenues in the three months ended 30 June fell to MYR89.7 million, down from MYR122.3 million, due to lower international telephony and payphone turnover. TIME has yet to release its operational statistics for the period.
TIME says it will launch commercial High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) services in the second quarter of 2007 with initial coverage of 20% of the population, rising to 50% and 80% coverage by 2008 and 2010 respectively. TIME won a 3G operating licence in March and says it plans to invest MYR800 million in the launch of 3G-based broadband internet services. It does not plan to use the 3G frequency to launch cellular services and instead intends to use the concession to augment its wireline broadband internet offerings. TIME began trials of HSDPA in May, in conjunction with China’s Huawei Technologies and Alcatel of France. The pilot of the so-called 3.5G technology will be used to assess how the HSDPA network behaves under different patterns of demand. TIME submitted its detailed 3G business plan to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) on 18 August.