In line with the expansion of high speed connectivity across the nation as insisted by the current government in their manifesto, two new agreement for phase 2 and a sub urban broadband project has been signed with TM that will see deployment of more access points for broadband network infrastructure and services.

The 10-year HSBB 2 project encompasses the deployment of additional access and core capacity covering state capitals and selected major towns throughout the country. It includes planning, designing, implementation, operation and maintenance of HSBB network infrastructure and services. Under the project, 95 additional exchanges will be HSBB ready providing access to 390,000 premises by 2017.

Meanwhile, the SUBB infrastructure will also be rolled out over a period of ten years, involving the upgrading of existing copper lines to deliver high-speed broadband access speeds of up to 20Mbps and up to 100Mbps in areas deployed with Fibre-to-the-Home technology, to over 420,000 premises by 2019.

As for the investment required the total cost incurred over the 10 year for both the phases chalks up to RM3.4 billion with RM1.1 billion coming from tax payers and the rest will be borne by TM.

Priority for the coverage will be targeted on economic areas including state capitals, selected major towns, including passing industrial zones throughout the country, passing Public Universities, Institutions of Higher Education, Private Institutions of Higher Education, Matriculation Colleges and other Government Colleges.

The SUBB project on the other hand will cover sub urban and rural areas, passing Public Universities, Institutions of Higher Education, Private Institutions of Higher Education, Matriculation Colleges and other Government Colleges.

TM will roll-out last mile access network for both HSBB 2 and SUBB projects to homes and businesses utilising FTTH, Ethernet-to-the-home (ETTH) and Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Line 2 (VDSL2) technologies.

According to TM, there are currently 2.29 million broadband customers on its network however with Unifi exchange centres covering 1.7 million premises the telco has only managed a mere 50% reach with just 800,000 UniFi customers. It will be interesting to note on the need for such high capital investment if the take up rate is exceedingly low, and what will the projection be for the migration? With mobile penetration far superior and the average speed on 4G at 5Mbps, the newer generation spend most of the internet experience on their devices and find no reason to subscribe to a wired connection which are said to be one of the highest in the region.

While TM UniFi packages come with a caveat which customers are required to subscribe to Hypp TV, the minimum speed is 30Mbps that costs RM179 with 5Mbps upload speed, and on the other hand our neighboring country’s Singtel offers 1Gbps for $50! You do the maths, and share your views with us.