Posted on Monday, 20th October 2008 by editor

I was at a Hari Raya do on Saturday and someone asked me what I thought of the HSBB project.

I said that in principle, wired high speed access is not only useful but downright necessary. The guy I was speaking to was from an IPTV startup company and he needed no reminding that high speed broadband will make or break his venture - and by high speed broadband I don’t mean the ‘best effort’ 1 MBPS but ‘in reality’ a patchy 450kbps service most of us have these days.

But that also got me thinking. With HSDPA, WiMAX, iBurst and now HSBB, aren’t we in danger of having too many options? Of course, roll out is just starting for WiMAX and HSBB is some years away. But the sheer number of offerings simply mean, in my opinion, that not alll will survive … and that consolidation (as in a telco maybe buying a WiMAX company) is very likely.

Tags: HSBB, HSDPA, iBurst, malaysia, Mobile, Telco, WiMAX
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Posted on Thursday, 16th October 2008 by editor

MNP was officially launched 15 October by the Minister of Energy, Water and Communications, Datuk Shaziman at PWTC.

The Maxis MNP team

This culminates a long journey that saw many starts and stops before work began in earnest about a year and a half ago. A team led by SKMM’s Adrian Abdul Ghani and MNP heads from all telcos finally got the job done.

I’ve interviewed some of them, especially TL Wong fromTalian Gerak Alih, the company running the MNP clearing house and I can say that we have an advanced and robust system in place.

The system is capable of almost instantaneous porting – though officially it can take up to 5 days. If it takes a few days, it won’t be because of the system – it will depend on how the operators respond when someone puts in a request to port.

Anyway, to mark the arrival of MNP in Malaysia, get educated by familiarising yourselves with a few myths that have crept into people’s minds.

1. There will be extra costs because the clearing house will have a surcharge on all calls from now on.

Not true. Talian Gerak Alih is only paid a fixed fee by the operators and the entire project was carried out transparently and vetted by financial experts.

2. All mobile calls you make now will go to the central clearing house which will then route it to the correct operator because only they will know which number belongs to which operator henceforth

Not true. In fact the clearing house is not in the loop at all. Calls will be routed normally. Talian Gerak Alih is only the centre point person for porting requests – it will take a port request from one operator and pass it to the other and when it gets a response, it informs the first operator. Think of it as a sort of a ‘mobile industry stock exchange’. Once a number is ported, operators will refresh their own directories in real time and calls will go normally through current networks.

3. Only mobile companies are involved in the MNP project.

Not true. MNP affected every phone company because for example, even fixed line operator TM needs to know which operator a number belongs to. In fact, TM fast forwarded its implementation of its Next Generation Network (NGN) because of MNP.

4. You are going to be charged RM25 when you move your business to another operator.

Partly true. Every port will involve a fee of RM25 that someone will have to pay. But in all likelihood, it will be the receiving service provider and not you. To pay RM25 to get a new subscriber is chicken feed. Or rather pay RM 25 to pull a customer from their competitor, it’s priceless to them actually.

Lastly, I will not make any specific comments yet on who is going to win this war. All I want to say for now is that it will be a long battle – don’t be deceived by what happens over the next few weeks.

In the final analysis, people switch for one of two reasons – perceived better value and services or better network quality.

On that second count, one telco would have had a nightmare at the launch yesterday. They had no network coverage in the hall at PWTC! Can you believe that? I’ve heard a lot of complaints about their network coverage but this one beats the cake. And they knew because at least 30 of their top executives were there and they surely would have looked at their phones to see why they had no calls coming in.

I won’t name that telco for now but I hope they look at their network quality seriously. All the fancy advertising won’t work if people get dropped calls and no coverage.

Tags: Celcom, DiGi, malaysia, Maxis, MNP, Mobile, Mobile Number Portability, SKMM, U Mobile
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Posted on Monday, 6th October 2008 by editor

It’s all systems go for MNP to be officially launched in Malaysia on 15 October.

After that, expect an advertsing blitz by operators either trying to retain existing customers or attract new ones.

A sort of a dry run has ben taking place in the Klang Valley whereby only prepaid users can move to other telcos. The number of daily ports have been limited to a thousand a day (context: there are more than 20 million lines in Malaysia).

After so much suspense, we will finally know over the next six months if MNP will have a major impact in Malaysia.

Tags: Celcom, DiGi, Maxis, MNP, Mobile, SKMM
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Posted on Monday, 6th October 2008 by editor

Over the Raya holidays, the best news I heard was that international roaming charges will finally be reduced in the ASEAN region - starting first with Singapore.

International Roaming charges are ridiculously high so much so that even some CEOs that I know use roaming facilities very sparingly. I’ve written about this in Mobile World quite a few times.

The EU acted on this earlier and it is good news that roaming charges will drop here too. But they also need to look at data charges too when overseas. Lot’s of international travellers want to access the internet while overseas but are deterred by high charges. Don’t wait years to do that now.

Also while call roaming charges are expected to be cut by as much as half, I think they can still be pushed lower. They should go down by around 75% in my opinion.

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Posted on Tuesday, 30th September 2008 by editor

Sometime next year, when you purchase a notebook, you could be looking out for a mark on it that signifies it is 3.5G ready.

A group of companies comprising mobile operators, chipset manufacturers and notebook companies have created a mark that will show a notebook is ready for mobile broadband, but only of the ‘approved’ kind, that is.

The campaign takes a leaf from the hugely successful ‘Intel inside’ campaign that told consumers a notebook came with an Intel chip.

This time round these companies are going to spend a whopping US$1B worldwide to promote their mark. Every notebook that carries that mark will signal that it is ready to offer mobile Internet access.
Participating companies include 3, Asus, Dell, Ericsson, Lenovo, LG, Microsoft, Orange, Qualcomm, Telefónica Europe, Telecom Italia, TeliaSonera, T-Mobile, Toshiba and Vodafone.

On paper, this initiative is being taken so consumers will not be confused. As the logic goes, there is a symbol for Bluetooth and there is a symbol for WiFi but none for mobile broadband. Consumers were getting confused (obviously) with terms like 3.5G, 4G, LTE, HSPDA, HSUPA and HSPA. This mark covers all those mentioned above.

But what it doesn’t cover is WiMAX, which is the real reason (IMHO) why this mark is being launched. Trust me, this campaign is being undertaken to counter the emerging threat being posed by WiMAX.

Anyway, remember this mark – it will mean that you won’t need a USB modem to get 3.5G and above with a telco.

Mobile Broadband

And let’s all wait for the WiMAX symbol; I’m sure it’s not far away in the future – or it could be already here as WiMAX proponents could simply use WiMAX as their logo – easy to remember and already well known.

Let the brand wars begin.

Tags: 3.5G, GSM, LTE, Mobile Broadband, WiMAX
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Posted on Thursday, 29th November 2007 by editor

UPDATE

The phone DID NOT KILL the worker. Police now say that a fellow worker  attempted to cover up a death.

___________________________________

We’ve all heard of exploding phone batteries and the supposed dangers health dangers of wireless transmissions. But this is the first time I’ve heard of a death allegedly caused by a mobile phone.

Your mobile phone, it turns out, could kill you. As in literally burn you to death.

There has been a news report that a South Korean quarry worker has been found dead with a burning mobile phone stuck to his chest.

The man, a quarry worker, was probably working alone when the incident took place.

The scene was right out of a horror movie. A witness was quoted as saying “He was lying on the ground and his mobile phone was still burning so I had to put the fire out.” He was taken to the hospital with the melted mobile phone stuck to his chest.

From the picture that accompanies the Reuters story, it’s not possible to determine what brand of phone is involved in this tragic incident.

But I would stop keeping that phone in shirt pockets until we get more information.

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Posted on Wednesday, 14th November 2007 by editor

It’s official. TimeDotCom has accepted the offer from DiGi to take up TimeDotCom’s 3G spectrum in return for DiGi shares worth around RM650 million.

TimeDotCom was controversially given the nod over DiGi when the licenses were given in early 2006. To get the license, TimeDotCom paid only RM50 million at that time. It then famously sat tight and failed to take any concrete steps to launch their 3G services, though it was supposed to submit and follow a detailed business plan to the MCMC as part of the requirements.

The acceptance of the offer from DiGi means that TimeDotCom will make a clean profit of around RM600 million by essentially doing nothing.

It looks like yet another Malaysian rent seeker has hit paydirt.

It must be painful for DiGi to do this and it certainly doesn’t look good for this country too. DiGi must be regretting its decision not to submit a bid for 3G during the first round of bidding back in 2002 when Maxis and Celcom got their licenses.

Sure, it could have been worse for DiGi if it had instead been forced to buy a stake in debt ridden TimeDotCom as widely speculated earlier. That would have meant exposure to some RM2 billion in debts. But still RM600 million is big money. If it had been given the license originally, this RM600 million would probably have been used to put up the infrastructure and launch the service by now.

The other three telcos, Maxis, Celcom and UMobile (MITV) paid RM50 million each for their licenses. Would it not have been possible instead for the relevant Ministry to take the spectrum back from TimeDotCom for non launch of services and assign it to DiGI?

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Posted on Tuesday, 13th November 2007 by editor

As I speculated earlier, DiGi has managed to get what it needs from TimeDotCom without having to also take up unwanted baggage.

After two years of being in denial, DiGi has finally accepted the inevitable and offered to basically rent TimeDotCom’s 3G spectrum until 2018. The rental price is RM654.5 million which will be satisfied by issuing new DiGi shares which means that no money will change hands immediately. The first press statements do not state if TimeDotCom must hold on to the shares for any set period of time.

Telenor will also have to reduce its shareholding to below 50% and it will be doing that through a book-building process. TimeDotCom has been invited to participate in that exercise too which I take to mean that it can, if it wishes too, take up more DiGi shares.

The plus side for DiGi is that it finally gets a 3G license which will allow it to compete on equal footing with the other three telcos. Even more significantly, it won’t be saddled with non-core businesses which would have been the case if it had been made to buy a stake in TimeDotCom. Now it won’t have to worry about holding TimeDotCom shares and the huge debts it is carrying.

For TimeDotCom, it can finally earn some revenue from its 3G license. If it holds on to its DiGi stake, there is a possibility of earning much more than RM645 million. That stake could become a significant earner and that might enable it to build capital for its other ventures.

DiGi however is well behind Maxis and Celcom and will need time to get its 3G infrastructure in place. It should only be slightly behind UMobile which is on course to launch its 3G services later this year or early next year.

I, for one, am glad that this long drawn episode is finally over. Two years have been wasted unnecessarily.

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Posted on Tuesday, 6th November 2007 by editor

The move I believe that will dramatically change the mobile industry has finally been confirmed. Google will be leading an alliance that will develop a new mobile operating system.

I didn’t get excited at all when Apple announced the iPhone. Sure, it is a cool phone and it breaks new ground in user friendliness and intuitiveness. But these are featurs that other handset manufacturers can duplicate or beat over time. Also, Apple has never been comfortable working with outside developers and I am not confident at all about their recent move to open up the iPhone operating system to outside developers. One must remember that at the launch of iPhone, Steve Jobs said that Apple was not opening up the OS to third party developers because they may end up spoiling the OS with unstable applications. It’s clear then that the move by Apple to now open up the OS is simply in response to the widely anticipated announcement by Google.

On the other hand, the Google OS, Android, is something to really look forward to. If you look at the Internet, all the copolest applications have come out of open source and I am certain that the move by the Open Handset Alliance will bring that same innovation to mobile phone screens.

Imagine being able to make the mobile phone screen look exactly the way you want. Imagine seeing cool new social networking and internet applications available on mobile phones without paying for them through telcos.

The incumbents now have a worthy challenger.

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Posted on Wednesday, 17th October 2007 by editor

The saga of Telenor’s stake in DiGi has been a frustrating one but thankfully, it should be over by year end.

To recap, Telenor has to bring down its stake in DiGi from 61% to a maximum of 49% by year end to meet government regulations on shareholdings by foreign companies.

It’s been delayed by at least one year but this time round, the government has stood firm and refused any extensions.

There have been all kinds of speculations but the most persistent have been that Telenor will sell its stake to Timedotcom and thus be able to make use of the 3G license that TimeDotCom has and which DiGi covets.

So far, to me, it has played out like a shotgun wedding scenario. DiGi obviously wants the 3G license but it is not interested in taking up the other loss making businesses of TimeDotCom. Khazanah Nasional wants to get rid of the TomeDotCom shares it is stuck with and thus is betting that DiGi will bite the bullet and enter into a forced marriage with Timedotcom.

Well, that’s the way it seemed until recently. Timedotcom shares went all the way to RM1.40 on this speculation while DiGi share price dropped as thedeadline neared.

However, it appears that the reluctant bridegroom might yet get away. After Telenor’s officials met Dato’ Seri Lim Keng Yaik recently, the share price movements of DiGi and Timedotcom have shown very interesting movements.

A few days after that meeting, DiGi’s share price started to move upwards. Timedotcom on the other hand has steadily moved south. Here are share price movements taken from TheStar’s Biz website that shows these clear trends. Look at what happens after 10 September when Telenor officials met Dr Lim Keng Yaik.

I’m wondering, and I must stress that this is pure speculation here, if a different deal has been struck.

Could it be possible that Telenor might either sell its stake in DiGi to Khazanah directly or some other local party with Timedotcom shares not being part of this deal? Maybe, the government has blinked and Timedotcom, which has not done anything with its 3G license thus far, will give back the license so that DiGi might get the license directly.

Timedotcom has a sort of compensation because it has been given the chance to wire up the IDR investment region.

It sure looks like a nice solution except perhaps for long suffering Timedotcom shareholders.

Whatever it is, I want the issue settled one way or another so that DiGi can start providing 3G services to its subscribers.

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