(Japanese Site)
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| Telekom Malaysia Signs Deal for MSC Infrastructure
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May 29, 1998 (KUALA LUMPUR) -- Telekom Malaysia Bhd. signed a one
billion ringgit (US$263 million) deal to provide state-of-the-art
telecommunication infrastructure facilities for Putrajaya, the
new federal government administrative center located within
Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC).
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The telecom infrastructure will include fiber optic cables
capable of supporting high bandwidth data transfers necessary for
the MSC's objective of becoming a global multimedia hub.
The MSC is a 750 square kilometer zone south of capital city
Kuala Lumpur designated for the development and delivery of
various multimedia products and services such as electronic
government, smart card applications, telemedicine, distance
learning, remote manufacturing and electronic commerce. It has
been endorsed and supported by more than 136 companies, including
Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp., Oracle Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc.
and Motorola Inc.
Located 25 kilometers from Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya covers an area
of 4,581 hectares and is expected to support 250,000 residents.
It will have 76,000 government staff occupying 1.5 million square
meters of floor space and will be the center of the government's
initiative to be completely paperless.
The office complex of the Prime Minister's department and his
official residence are among the first buildings slated to be
ready by October.
Telekom Malaysia's deal with project manager Putrajaya Corp. will
be spread over five years, with the customer access network
taking up 35 percent of the total cost involved. The remaining 65
percent will be used for switching and transmission systems,
buildings, land, site preparation and other costs.
"The network, which is on par or even better than what is
available today, is necessary to ensure that all systems and
applications offered can support the transaction of data and
information at high speeds," said Telekom CEO Mohamed Said
Mohamed Ali at the agreement signing.
The telecom network, the most comprehensive one its kind in the
country, will be based on a three-tier structure. Tier One, which
is the backbone network, will support between 2.5Gbps and 10Gbps,
and Tier Two and Tier Three are customer access networks which
will support 34Mbps to 622Mbps and 64kbps to 2Mbps, respectively.
The components of the telecom infrastructure include both copper
and fiber optic cables, synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH)
transmission system equipment, public switched telephone network
(PSTN) and integrated service digital network (ISDN) switches, a
trunk network system, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) core and
access switches as well as customer access networks.
The infrastructure will allow those within the community to enjoy
services such as the Internet, smart schools, telemedicine, cable
television, electronic commerce, electronic government and
smartcard applications. Mohamed Said said the network will be
linked both domestically and internationally and also to Telekom
Malaysia's nationwide broadband communications network, Corporate
Information Super Highway or Coins.
Under the terms of the agreement, Telekom Malaysia, the country's
largest carrier, would have the rights to provide Putrajaya's
telecom services on an exclusive basis. To avoid infrastructure
duplication, Telekom Malaysia will offer access to its Putrajaya
infrastructure to other telecom operators to provide value-added
services in the area.
Mohamed Said said that the first phase of the infrastructure
network is already in progress.
"The backbone link is already 50 percent complete while the
exchange will be completed by the end of July," said Mohamed
Said.
He said revenue from the operation should start to flow in by the
third quarter of this year. "However, we expect to break even
only after five years, depending on the progress of the
development," he said.
Telekom Malaysia also holds the exclusive rights for the
provision of basic telecommunication facilities to the entire MSC
area which involves an estimated investment of 5 billion ringgit
(US$1.32 billion).
Designed as an open multimedia network, the MSC's entire telecom
infrastructure is due for completion by December 2020.
Related story: Malaysia Multimedia Corridor Gets US$1B
Investment
(Julian Matthews, Asia BizTech Correspondent)
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