Chinese New Year celebration or not, Energy, Water, and Communications Minister Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik is still very much at work as he disclosed the four things the ministry will do to ensure better services for telecommunications consumers.
Admitting that he is yet to be satisfied with the network coverage provided by the telecommunications companies (telcos), Lim said the priority of the mission was to push telcos to increase connectivity, especially in areas where the population is not large.
“I watch the papers, telcos announcing how much profit they make. I am going to knock the profit they make and push them to use this profit to invest on more towers and more transmission units to improve coverage for the people,” he told reporters at the Parti Gerakan Chinese New Year “open house” here.
Lim, who is the party president, said it was sad for a country like Malaysia to still experience “dropped calls” (calls getting disconnected) owing to lack of network coverage.
He urged telcos to not only concentrate on the urban areas like the Klang Valley but also to roll out more towers in the other areas to provide better transmission and, therefore, connectivity.
Second on his agenda is the task to ensure that the prepaid registration exercise is made as authentic as posibble.
In doing so, he said, the ministry might consider to have telcos to do some auditing on the registration.
Last year, the ministry had make it compulsary for prepaid customers to register their numbers for security purposes, which had made about 18 million prepaid users to have their numbers registered.
“I want the telcos to do the audit. If I find out that somebody’s using some other person’s IC (again), I think I will better do something about it,” he said.
“We also need to ensure the authencity of the registration exercise, if not we will be make a laughing stock,” he added.
The third thing the minister has to do is to make sure that telcos are ready to exercise number portability, to enable consumers to have seamless connection regardless of the numbers they are using.
Number portability allows consumers to maintain the phone number they are using even when they change service providers.
Lastly, Lim said, the ministry is also looking into ways to improve domestic roaming for the sake of consumers, especially in the remote areas.
He said the media should play its role to educate consumers to demand better service, which also means better connectivity.-Bernama
