Malaysia’s three major telcos, Telekom Malaysia (TM), Celcom and Digi, signed a wholesale bandwidth deal to provide extensive backhaul infrastructure for broadband rollout in the country on Friday.
Under the agreement, TM will provide wholesale bandwidth connectivity via TM Next-Gen Backhaul services for aggregation and access sites jointly owned by Celcom (via subsidiary Celcom Networks) and DiGi, covering between 3,000-km and 5,000-km in Peninsular Malaysia.
The deal is part of an ongoing network collaboration between Celcom and DiGi announced in early 2011, that aims to roll out more than 10,000-km of fiber network nationwide, the companies said in a joint statement.
“This partnership reiterates TM’s commitment in providing an open access for all MCMC-licensed service providers, allowing these operators to provide and deliver high quality services to their end users hence further strengthening our position as a neutral service provider,” said TM Group chief executive, Tan Sri Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa.
The collaboration, he added, spans more than ten years and involves two phases.
“The first phase will be over a three year period starting from 2014 until 2016 followed by the second phase deployment of additional sites for mobile access and aggregator sites across Peninsular Malaysia,” Tan Sri Zamzamzairani said.
TM is expected to gain between 400 million ringgit ($123.7 million) and 600 million ringgit ($185.6 million) in lease fees over the next 10 to 15 years, Bernama quoted Tan Sri Zamzamzairani as saying.
For Celcom and Digi, the deal is expected to support the transmission requirements for their rollout of 4G LTE services and enable both companies to optimize cost and efficiently utilize TM’s infrastructure.
“Demand for quality internet services is growing year-by-year in Malaysia, and Malaysians all over the country today require access to always-on, high-speed data connectivity to cater to their increasing needs. By leasing wholesale bandwidth services for access and aggregation fiber network from TM, DiGi will be able to obtain quick access to fiber infrastructure to support our future network capacity demands, to deliver affordable and high-quality internet connectivity to more Malaysians.” DiGi’s chief executive, Henrik Clausen said.
“The collaborative effort today marks another clear move to be more operationally efficient as an industry, and by leveraging on synergies created we will be able to build and utilize our assets more efficiently, optimize costs, and avoid duplicating network infrastructures.”
Commenting on the collaboration, Celcom chief, Dato’ Sri Shazalli Ramly, said: “This collaboration is a significant milestone for Celcom …We are committed to improving our nationwide network for coverage and speeds in the long run and this represents one of many key investments into network quality that Celcom is currently implementing.”