National Broadband Initiative (SKMM)

Overview

The National Broadband Implementation Strategy or better known as National Broadband Initiative (NBI) puts in place a national strategy that will bring broadband to the whole nation. In 2007 the Government of Malaysia has set its target for broadband whereby the country is to achieve 50% household broadband penetration by the end of 2010.

The Implementation Plan

With the target for broadband set to 50% household penetration by the end of 2010, the Government of Malaysia has identified a strategy that encompass both the supply and demand aspects of broadband.

On the supply aspect, broadband infrastructure and services will be rolled out throughout the country. The delivery of services will be through wired and wireless connectivity. In the mean time, the existing broadband and cellular coverage will be expanded under the Universal Service Provision (USP) initiative.

For the high economic impact areas, the current broadband services will be upgraded to provide higher speed of more than 10Mbps. The Government has signed a Public Private Partnership (PPP) agreement with Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) to roll out high speed broadband infrastructure at selected areas. The project is called High Speed Broadband (HSBB) Project

In order to achieve household penetration of 50%, an emphasis on supply alone is insufficient. There must be an effective strategy to encourage demand for broadband. Therefore, emphasis will be given to three aspects of demand, they which are Awareness, Attractiveness and Affordability.

The approach for creating awareness will be through continuous government and private sector involvement in the awareness programs and capacity building initiatives. In order to improve the attractiveness of the online content, efforts will be focused to enhance and promote e-Government, e-Education and e-Commerce. Efforts are also on the way to digitalise the traditional information resources such as library, archive, etc. to be available online. The affordability factor and bridging the digital divide is being improved by developing various incentives to reduce the broadband access costs and widening the community access.

Benefits to Malaysia

The benefits of broadband are:

• The implementation of broadband will create tangible impact on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contribution of the country. Based on the statistics for year 2008, the communications and multimedia industry contributed 6.1% in term of revenue to the country’s GDP.
• The use of broadband will increase the national competitiveness and attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the country.
• Broadband is one of the enabler for knowledge-based economy With the implementation of broadband and achieving the 50% target, will create 135,000 new high value jobs in the ICT sector.
• The implementation of broadband services will create spin-off effect in other sectors such as engineering, local content development and broadcasting

Statistics and Achievements

To date the statistics for broadband are as follows:

Source: www.skmm.gov.my