KUALA LUMPUR: TELEKOM Malaysia Bhd (TM) expects accelerated growth from recently-launched mobile portfolio webe to complement its fixed-line business Streamyx and UniFi, says its consumer and SME (small and medium entreprise) executive vice-president Imri Mokhtar.
“This year, TM will focus on the mass market and accelerate that by bringing the convergence experience out to home and SME customers,” he said recently.
Imri said TM anticipated steady growth for its fixed-line business, which was fuelled by broadband.
“Now that we have completed our convergence portfolio with the mobile, we expect accelerated growth to come from the business as we gain market share this year,” he said.
Imri said while another challenging year meant business as usual for the telco, it was crunch time for TM to up its game in delivering the value in services.
“When times are challenging and Malaysians are committing their hard earned money, it is TM’s responsibility to deliver what is expected,” he said.
On the High Speed Broadband Phase 2 (HSBB2) and Suburban Broadband (SUBB) projects, Imri said the company was on track to meet the target in terms of the rollout, which was to deliver a total of 810,000 ports.
He said as at the end of last year, TM had delivered more than 300,000 ports for both projects.
TM had in December 2015 signed an agreement with the government for the implementation of the HSBB2 and SUBB to deploy the access and domestic core networks to deliver an end-to-end broadband network infrastructure and service, as well as increase coverage for the nation.
The 10-year HSBB2 project encompasses the deployment of additional access and core capacity covering state capitals and selected major towns throughout the country.
Under the project, 95 additional exchanges would be HSBB-ready, providing access to 390,000 premises this year.
Meanwhile, the SUBB infrastructure will also be rolled out over 10 years, involving the upgrading of existing copper lines to deliver high-speed broadband access speeds of up to 20 megabyte per second (Mbps) and up to 100Mbps in areas deployed with Fibre-to-the-Home technology, to more than 420,000 premises by 2019.
The total cost of HSBB2 investment for a period of 10 years is RM1.8 billion. The government will be investing RM500 million and the remaining RM1.3 billion will be invested by TM.
The total cost of the SUBB investment for a period of 10 years is RM1.6 billion with the government investing RM600 million and TM investing RM1 billion.