Broadband in Malaysia one of the highest price in the region

TM prides itself in the region when it comes to broadband, but not according to the Malaysia-Australia Business Council, Intel Malaysia and the consumers. A recent study on Internet quality conducted by Oxford University and sponsored by Cisco also pointed out that Malaysia was ranked a poor 48th among 66 countries surveyed (view the press release here).

Below are some important points extracted from the article "Investors put off by high-cost, low-speed broadband in M'sia" from The Business Times(Singapore).

• "Malaysian broadband offers some of the lowest speeds in the region, but at the highest costs"

• "The government must deregulate or liberalise gateways in order to improve competitiveness by providing larger broadband at lower costs," said Ryaz Patel, Intel Electronics country manager for Malaysia and Brunei

• "The lacklustre quality and high cost of broadband is hurting the country's knowledge aspirations come on the heels of warnings by Australian businesses that slow Internet speeds were putting them off investing in Malaysia,"

• "Large technical documents from Australia had difficulty getting sent over because of the poor quality broadband. Australian and American investors see this as a nuisance and an impediment to them to do business successfully here,"

• "Malaysian consumers pay significantly more for broadband, but even to buy broadband wholesale as a service provider was 'frighteningly expensive' compared to its neighbours. "

The full article can be found here.