This question is relevant to us since the only mega project happening in Malaysia today is the RM11 billion+ High Speed Broadband by Telekom. (The only other I can think of is Iskandar Malaysia development, but that’s a long term township development program). Out of that RM2.4 billion bill will be foot by the Government. So it’s our money being spent here and we need to be sure that it is spent wisely.

Extract of a study conducted by Oxford University and sponsored by Cisco. (chart by Malaysian Insider)

One thing for sure is that Internet services in Malaysia need to be improved. Just go through the blogs, forums or Facebook statuses and one will come across slow-internet-frustrations vented in capital letters and nasty symbols. Social critics like Lim Kit Siang and Malaysian Insider have quoted a study by the business school of Oxford University which ranked Malaysia a distant 48 out of 66 countries.

This state of affairs has been noted by our Government and to be fair to them, many initiatives have been taken. The HSBB project and issuance of new licenses to aspiring wireless broadband are some of them.

Sorry… let’s not divert from my original topic.

In an article in gigaom, John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, naturally agreed wholeheartedly:

The impact of broadband has been similar to that of the (USA’s) national highway system in the 1950s. Until then, our nation’s roads were slow and the quality was unpredictable, which hindered commerce and travel. The modern highway system made our country accessible and in the process, created new industries — transforming our economy and by extension, our society.

This view seemed to be confirmed by a new study released Tuesday by the Public Policy Institute of California. It concluded that employment grows faster in places where access to broadband has expanded. (Get copy of report here).

However, once you finished reading the report, you will see that some of the findings of that study are not so enthusiastic. In doing the study, Jed Kolko, an associate director at the PPIC and also author of the report, compared changes in several economic outcomes with the extent of broadband expansion.

Surprisingly, his research shows that expanded broadband availability has not increased the likelihood that workers telecommute, or have home-based businesses. Telecommuting is one key area always put forward by broadband-proponents. In reality, communication with workers by video is sophisticated and requires expensive hardware and much faster Internet connection. It can also be explained by the fact that corporate cultures discourage telecommuting.

Though the report found strong link between broadband expansion to population growth, it also points out that the average wage and the employment rate are unaffected by Internet expansion.

Broadband has a “probably causal” relationship to job growth, and it may bring other benefits, including better health information, educational opportunities and civic engagement, although those benefits are hard to measure and evidence is “quite limited”
Kolko said.

What a dampener. So what does means? There goes my dream of working in shorts from home with 20% raise?

Related articles

• Broadband Boosts Economic Development to a Point (gigaom.com)
• Canadian broadband is world-class: ISP-funded report (cbc.ca)
• Telekom expects HSBB project to boost GDP

It was reported by BBC that Ofcom (the UK equivalent of our MCMC here) has complained that broadband users in UK are not getting the speeds they are paying for. Less than 9% of users received more than 6Mbps whilst the average users across the UK suffers actual connection speed of a paltry 4.1Mbps. Tsch…. pity them Brits huh.

What about the rest of the world… what kind of broadband speed that they are getting now?

Look at the Japanese enjoying a zippy 60Mbps connection. “Very fast, eh” “Arigatou gozaimas“. The Koreans as expected also enjoyed very high connectivity speed too. Greece and Mexico… that seemed more like our level of standard.

What hope do we have?

you may ask. I’ve given up hope on the WiMax fellas. Half of them are just interested in making press conferences just to keep their licenses alive, whilst a couple has actually spent money in rolling out services in Klang Valley but the service quality is still questionable.

Luckily there is still the much touted RM15 billion High Speed Broadband (HSBB) project by Telekom Malaysia to keep our MSC dream alive. It was claimed that HSBB will offer speed of up-to 1Gbps to commercial users whilst residential users will be offered speed from 10Mbps to 100Mbps.

By next year, some lucky residents in Taman Tun Dr Ismail, Bangsar, Subang Jaya and Shah Alam are supposed to be able to enjoy the HSBB service. By 2013, an ambitious number of 1.3 million users are being bandied about.

But how much will this cost us? Telekom has not announced any figures yet but I read a blog posting from an inside sources that quoted RM500++ for the 10mbps package. Alamak…

finish lah like that.

Of course I have to hear it from the horses mouth. So I went and asked the director in charge of HSBB project, Ahmad Azhar. He was coy about divulging the actual numbers but promised that the cost will be ‘lower than what TM would have liked it to be’. Pressed into more details of what the actual offerings of HSBB will be, he said that TM is focusing on the triple-play package (telco talk for services that offered voice, data and video).

That’s great news because that’s what I have been waiting for. Triple play service would allow IPTV offering in Malaysia – full-scale interactive High Definition television channel. However, this will require fast fibre optic connectivity and HSBB will have to be properly configured with good quality switching equipments to make it happen. Another Screamyx in the making?

In the USA, two service providers are slugging it out in this fibre-optic services arena. Cablevision is offering 15mbps broadband for US$15.99 a month. There is also the 50mbps package by both Cablevision and Verizon prized at US$144 per month. In the UK, Virgin Media (reported by Ofcom to have the fastest service) offered 10mbps package at £14 per month and £35 per month for 50mbps (both exclude the bundled telephone fees). A basic triple play package from BT

Driven buy

with 8mbps download speed will cost £30.33 per month (exclude telephone charges).

Are those cheap or expensive?