THE Energy, Water and Communications Ministry wants at least half of the country's six million households to have broadband access by 2010.

Its deputy minister, Datuk Joseph Salang Gandum, said the government had set aside RM15.2 billion to boost broadband service.

He said the ministry was looking at ways to use universal service providers in areas that had limited or zero broadband access.

"Up to December last year, there was 1,485 hotspot locations nationwide with WiFi connection and efforts will be made to increase them," he said.

Joseph, in his reply to a supplementary question from Mohd Firdaus Jaafar (Pas-Jerai), said Malaysian broadband access was still under-developed when compared with Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea.
However, he qualified this by saying that Malaysia was doing well for a developing nation.

In his reply to the original question from Mohd Firdaus, Joseph said the ratio of Internet users with dial-up connections stood at 14 per cent for every 100 Malaysians.

Joseph added that several programmes had taken off the ground to introduce broadband Internet to the rural areas.

They included the rural Internet programme involving workshops on ICT use by senior citizens, teachers and women.

"We also have a bi-monthly magazine called Aspirasi Digital which is distributed to schools, government offices and non-governmental organisations as reference material."