Villagers In Sabah Making Their Own Hotspot Tower For Better Internet Connection

Many areas in Malaysia still lack the infrastructure for internet access especially in the rural areas. Other than that, we still don’t have the fastest internet out there.

But that doesn’t stop the people from trying to get better connection for themselves. Reported by FreeMalaysiaToday, villagers from Sabah’s nothernmost Pitas district are coming u with their own solutions to get themselves online.

Using bamboo masts, some 20m high, the villagers hoist mineral bottles containing mobile telephones with their “hot spot” function switched on to capture scant cellular signals. Basically making their own hotspot towers. You gotta admit, that’s pretty smart.

The hoisted telephone provides the wifi signals for a household to access the internet. A visitor to an unidentified Pitas village recently recorded a video clip showing how the villagers set about it. The three-minute clip had been widely shared among social media users here.

In the YouTube video by FMT, you can see the bamboo poles near other houses in the kampung with a villager saying that was the only way they could have internet access.

District chief Mohd Zinin Andong Ajak said some villagers had no choice but to resort to such tactics as cellular telephone services in Pitas were spotty at best. There are 124 kampungs in Pitas, which covers about twice the size of Penang island.

“There is no cellular telephone signal in some of them. So, in villages where the signals are weak, the kampung folks have hoisted up their phones to get signals. They are already considered lucky,” he said.

Zinin said cellular telephone services were considered so bad that at Kampung Tambiling, a village just 5 minute drive from Pitas town, villagers faced difficulties in making or receiving calls.

“And in some areas like Kampung Kasagaan, there are no telephone signals at all. And this is 2020. How much longer must we have to wait for decent phone services?” he said. Good question. Do people need to go viral for the government to finally do something?

Just last June, Universiti Malaysia Sabah student Veveonah Mosibin, 18, recorded a clip of her climbing a tree near her house at Kampung Sabanalang to get a better cellular telephone signal so she could sit for her exam during the movement control order period.

She went viral and finally something was being done about it. Unfortunately, Veveonah became viral was once again after being criticise by Deputy Communications and Multimedia Minister Zahidi Zainul Abidin who accused her to have faked the whole video.

Friends and netizens came to her support proving that she did in fact took her exams that day.

 

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