Malaysia’s fixed line incumbent Telekom Malaysia™ has revealed that it is planning to roll out the next phase of its High Speed Broadband (HSBB) network in second-tier industrial areas and state capitals, The Sun Daily reports, citing TM CEO Datuk Seri Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa. ‘Phase one is up till end of 2012 and it was supply driven. After this, it will depend on demand and economic viability, and include anywhere in Malaysia with demand,’ the executive noted.
The comments were made at a signing ceremony which saw TM put pen to paper on a deal with local WiMAX operator REDtone, under which the duo agreed to deliver HSBB services powered by TM’s HSBB infrastructure. As per the terms of the deal, TM will provide the HSBB access and transmission services to REDtone, which will gain access to the approximately 1.3 million premises currently covered by the network. Commenting on the partnership, REDtone managing director Datuk Wei Chuan Beng said: ‘As REDtone’s growth engine, our data and broadband services are targeted at SMEs/SMIs as one of our core market segments. The HSBB collaboration will allow us to extend our service offerings to them to include value-add services such as enterprise cloud services and data centre services to further seal our leadership in the SME/SMI space.’ Looking further ahead, the REDtone executive also claimed that the deal would enable it to bundle HSBB services with its own Long Term Evolution-based (LTE-based) packages, whenever they are made available.