The biggest news this week is not about Apple’s iPhone launch which was somewhat a watershed moment for millions of fans who expected more from the tech giant, similarly many of us were expecting positive outcome from a proposed telecommunication merger news that could have placed Malaysia on the map with having the largest mobile operator in the world.
After a four month courtship, the hyped Axiata Telenor merger that would have resulted a mega-telco with over 500 million subscriber base. This is now passed and we are now back to business as usual as pointed out by Celcom CEO Idham Nawawi at the recent quarterly reporting session. The episode has shown us one thing, when it comes to Government Link Company between private entity mergers, the due diligence is not just about numbers and facts, there is public sentiment, politics, regulatory and employees. Despite the assurance by Axiata that there will be no lay-offs, the rumour mill was already in motion and certain political parties were spreading fear among the community on job losses. This coupled with Indonesia’s reluctant of having an European entity become a sizable telco player in the country were all signals that the merger will unlikely go through.
Axiata has issued a statement of not ruling out any merger proposition and will be open to expanding its footprint via this process, while Telenor is left reeling on a missed opportunity in gaining a big market share in the fastest growing telecoms sector. There is one party who shined through out this period, Celcom, Malaysia’s pioneer cellular operator. The company reported a strong quarter 2 after continues poor quarters in the past. Its postpaid base grew and even managed to increase its Average Revenue Per Unit (ARPU) to RM37.
4G network coverage is at 93% whilst 4G LTE-A coverage is 81% compared to 89% and 76% respectively in 2Q18. To date, its LTE network covers 10 states namely in Penang, Selangor, Johor, Perak with a 96% population coverage, which includes more than 25 prime cities such as Klang Valley, Putrajaya, Georgetown, Ipoh and Johor Bahru. In terms of sites it has over 11,000 sites including over 9,000 LTE sites nationwide with strong capacity for video streaming. But with 9 million Celcom users and another 3 million Mobile Virtual Network Operator riding on its network, the robust data highway is still under utilised and can handle much more traffic than it currently manages.
Despite that, Celcom will still continue to invest in deploying the latest end-to-end technology such as 4T4R multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO), Carrier Aggregation, 256 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) on its LTE tower sites.
Worse is Over
Moving forward the telco will steady the ship for the impending 5G roll out, and look into smart investments like IOT.
“We have also begun to explore collaborations with multiple technology partners and platform providers, both externally and internally, leading to the monetization of investments by delivering end-to-end Internet-of-Things (IoT) solutions for industries across key verticals in Malaysia, in preparation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR4.0)” added Idham.
Celcom is seeing better results after a tumultuous 18 months with sliding revenue, high subscriber churn and low customers confidence. Lowest ebb was when it lost its number 2 position after more than 3 decades of dominance in the cellular operation. Armed with fresh management team, a spanking state-of-art headquarters, the mood all around Celcom is upbeat, CEO Idham has brought stability and clear vision to the company. Its no longer business as usual of days of yore, but a new philosophy of placing customer in the centre of everything they do takes precedent above everything else. A formula that will always succeed!
