MALAYSIA's broadband penetration stood at 22.9% of households as of the first quarter 2009 and grew to 24.8% in the second quarter, according to communications and content regulator, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC). However, this is still far short of Malaysia's goal of 50% broadband penetration by 2010.

Between those two quarters, the total number of broadband subscribers using all types of technologies grew from 1.89 million to 2.12 million but the vast majority – namely 1.378 million in the second quarter were fixed-line ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Loop) subscribers up 40,600 from the first quarter, whilst growth in other types of fixed or satellite broadband was almost insignificant, altogether growing by a mere 5,600 to 6,000 in the respective quarters.

However, the biggest growth came from mobile broadband which leapt by 156,400 from 474,900 in the first quarter to 631,700 in the second, whilst the number of users of other wireless broadband technologies, such as WiMAX and so on jumped from 61,200 in the first quarter to 86,900 in the second, whilst according to the Economic Planning Unit of the Prime minister's department, under the government's Broadband to the General Population (BBGP) initiative, there were a total of 1.4 million wireless broadband users as of the second quarter, 2009 of which 66% used 3G/HSDPA and 25% WiMAX.

According to the MCMC's Household Use of the Internet Survey 2008, there were a total of 1.9 million households with xDSL or dial-up Internet access as of the 31st of March, 2008 or an estimated total of  close to 4.3 million users nationwide based on 2.26 users per household, of which 73.9% used broadband, 25% dial-up and 1% both.

However an issue of great concern has been the huge difference – i.e. a consistent 6:1 ratio of the percentage share of urban-to-rural Internet users from 2005 to 2008, and stubbornly holds. The 88:12 urban-to-rural ratio in 2005 dropped to 82:18 ion 2006 but climbed back to 85.3:14.7 in 2008. and what's more is the high concentration of Internet users in certain parts of the country.,

The state of Selangor had 26.1% of all Internet users, followed by 13% in the federal territory of Kuala Lumpur, the capital, 11.6% in Johor state, 8.4% in Penang all the way down to 0.6% in Perlis state, and whilst the East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak were not too badly of with 5% and 6.3% respectively, all the other states in peninsular Malaysia had 4.4% penetration or less; all of which is a pretty grim picture.

Experts' opinions

So to do its part to address this issue, on 14 July, Packet One Networks (P1), Malaysia's leading WiMAX operator held P1 Expert Net, which brought together representatives from academia, the public and private sectors to think beyond broadband an share their research findings, case studies and best practices to empower connected communities across Malaysia, especially in the under-served areas.

Whilst they disagree on the value of telecentres – ie. centres for community communications and Internet access
 -- all participants agreed on the need to provide actual value in terms of suitable content, applications and services to encourage especially rural dwellers to want to use broadband, as well as cooperation between government, service providers, the private sector, non-governmental bodies and the communities themselves to achieve this objective.

However, there are many issues such as the availability of computer hardware, software, maintenance, the employment status and salaries of telecentre staff, monitoring mechanism's and so on which need to be adequately addressed.

“For example, we talked to 30 telecentre operators in Terengganu who complained about the lack of hardware and software for their telecentres and they appealed to companies to provide them with some,”said Dr. Norizan. “They also require WiFi and face maintenance issues and need to train telecentre operators and whilst, the telecentre operators are their primary champion, they have no permanent post and even after five years they earn a salary of RM1,000 per month, so we need to make being a telecentre a recognised profession.

“It also needs both community and industry participation for the content and programmes to succeed and they also need to use renewable energy such as pico-hydro and solar energy,” Dr Norizan added.

In 2008, the E-Community Research Centre conducted a needs analysis study of marginalised communities, namely children, youth, women, indigenous groups, senior citizens, disabled groups and SMMEs via questionnaire distributed to 557 users of telecentres in nine states in Malaysia and focus group interviews of 58 respondents from the seven targeted groups to get an actual framework for the devlopment of digital content and the preparation of the Komuniti Kita (Our Community) portal.

They found that their top five reasons for using telecentres were for lifelong learning and  education (60.2%), to catch up on the news (46.8%), for general information (41.8%), to find employment (32.5%) and for information on sports, recreation and lifestyle (33.3%), whilst on-line transactions and e- commerce were very minimal (26.9%), followed by other matters (22/4%) and lastly politics (21.2%). Also, data from the 557 users surveyed and from 20 telecentres across nine states showed that most users were youth (75.29%) and 54.3% of those who used telecentres did so weekly.

“In conclusion, there are many interrelated factors to the success of telecentres as empowering agents for the rural communities and to bridge the digital divide. ICT literacy can be upgraded through training and awareness programmes. The telecentres can become effective centre for social activities among local communities and enable networking with other organisations as partners in training and economic
activities,” said Dr Norizan.

Can't just drop Internet into rural communities

Close to 3.4 billion people live in rural areas, including 70% in Africa and 60% in Asia and are three digital divides to overcome, according to Dr Mazlan Abbas, MIMOS head of Wireless Communications Cluster. The first is the Access Gap with the high cost to deploy connectivity, especially in remote areas, the Adoption Gap due to inadequate computer literacy and knowledge of language, as well as too much complexity of computers, and the Value Gap where there's a perceived low value due to lack of suitable content.

“The digital divide can only be solved holistically through improved service delivery to close the Access Gap, more easy-to-use Internet devices to close the Adoption Gap and in turn boost user confidence, and to close the the  Value Gap through t content and a platform for a business ecosystem,” said Dr Mazlan.

The expansion of the national network to rural and remote areas poses problems due to the lack of basic infrastructure such as road access and the availability of  power supply, the difficulty and high cost to maintain the network at such a distance and rough terrain, un-optimised network resources in sparsely,  limited income to spend on communications and a perceived lack of direct value from Internet.

Also ICT cannot be simply dropped into the rural area but must be made part of an integrated approach which takes into account the community's information needs and the capacity to absorb and use new technology and provide tangible value to the community. Such successful projects include the E-Bario and Agri Bazaar projects, where the Agri Bazaar's 50,000 registered members altogether transact RM50 million a year.

Besides softer issues such as sustainability, consumer acceptance, the right content, synergistic efforts and so on is the the right choice of technology for speed, access, quality-of-service, coverage, deployment cost and MIMOS' answer to this is its WiWi Gen 1.5 hybrid WiMAX cum WiFi customer premises equipment. It basically provides local WiFi coverage of its vicinity with WiMAX in the backhaul. MIMOS officially launched WiWi on 13 August.

“An upcoming IEEE standard called 802.16j will enable Multi-Hop Relay WiMAX, where base stations act as relays for neighbouring base stations in peer-to-peer fashion to extend their network's coverage into  isolated or rural areas,” said Dr Mazlan.

Affordable connectivity available to everyone

On the other hand, Dr. Bernd Nordhausen, senior solutions architect, Intel Technology Asia argues that instead of telecentres, the emerging model for connected communities is to make affordable connectivity available for everyone.

“The current model for connected communities tends to be voice-centric with one or two phones per community; sector specific with for example a focus only on education or health; telecentres which provide limited service without broadband and which tie users to having to be there to use its facilities; faces issues of sustainability; and hidden issues of limited value-added content and services,” said Nordhausen.

“However, the over 2,000 telecentres are not economically sustainable but on the other hand, making affordable connectivity available to everyone engages the whole community, provides services which the community requires, whilst broadband enables access to e-government, information, for small businesses, entertainment, telemedicine, communications and on-line education, whilst sustainability is easier to realise through the aggregate demand for these services with a focus on community needs, whilst universal service funds can help level the playing field for rural communities, since the cost to provide broadband in rural areas is generally higher than in urban areas.

“Wireless technologies such as WiMAX is ideal here, since it has wide coverage, provides true broadband capacity to a large number of users, which in turn lowers per-user cost,” he added.

Intel has earlier experience with setting up community broadband based on WiMAX in the remote village of Ta Van, Vietnam with the IPSTAR broadband satellite as the back haul link.

The system provided up to 1.5GB for 12 end user locations and provide the community with news, chat, on-line music; small business with eMail, blogs, photo-sites and tourist guides, schools with access to various lessons, crop and disease information in agriculture and the clinic with health and pharmaceutical information.

Chini Timur

Intel Capital has a stake in P1 which as a proof-of-concept, set up the P1 Community Broadband Centre (P1 CBC) in Chini Timur, a Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) agricultural smallholders scheme about 80km outside Kuantan, Pahang. At the same time P1 set up a WiMAX base station which extends the coverage of P1 CBC to the 5.390 persons living in the 980 households in Chini Timur sub-sections Chini Timur1, Chini Timur2 and Chini Timur3.

But even then, how many have their own PCs at home and how many can afford to own PCs?

“True, many homes don't have PCs but they have flat screen TVs which are more expensive and which they see the value of, whilst they don't see the value in having PCs but they would if they have connectivity, suitable content and innovative finance schemes,” said Nordhausen.

“P1 set up the CBC in Chini Timur in March as a proof of concept  site to enable us to better understand the make-up of a telecentre which can be replicated in other communities, and we believe that once people experience the benefits of broadband, they will want to have it at home,” said P1's Lorraine Lokman.

Through an ongoing collation of data, P1 will be able to gauge the impact of broadband on the community and by engaging sections of the community, it will be able to learn about what works and what doesn't to encourage broadband adoption.

It strategy sees its CBCs as convergence hubs to enhance community life, whether it be work, lives, play, shopping, education and prayer, whilst its three-pronged approach is to partner with the community to develop content, applications and activities tailored to their needs and to allow them to embrace ICT on their own terms, to enable long-term growth and enable sustainable development of the community and to design and implement programmes targeted for specific segments within the community, such as youth, women, entrepreneurs, agriculturalists and others to create opportunities.

P1 believes that the access to and use of various e-services, educational resources, lifelong learning and so on will complement local knowledge and context among the community, which will in turn build its capacity and lead to a positive socio-economic impact.

Amongst some of its research findings, 63% of Chini Timur's community are between 13 and 35years old, 95% are educated till Standard 6, 40% are students, 19% are settlers and 15% are housewives. The youth segment – i.e. 13 to 40 years comprise over 58% of its community and are the current computer users, whilst basic computer literacy is driven by necessity, with 60% using computers for school work, official business and enterprise. However, there's a low perceived value of the Internet – hence its low usage at only about 10%.

In the run-up to the P1 CBC, it consulted with the community, hired two university graduates as managers and set them for training. Membership of the centre is about 679, about 492 of who are aged between 13 and 36 years. followed by 123 between seven and 12 years, then 56 aged between 36 and 60, one above 60 and six in pre-school. Of the over 2,493 who attended training, 1,689 were between 13 and 36 years, 673 between seven and 12, 125 between 36 and 60, four above 60 and two in pre-school. As for their purpose for Internet usage, 219 of the 256 across all age groups who use the centre in the fourth week of June did so to access web applications.

To further help drive interest in Internet usage, P1 developed a community portal and content, Desaku at www.desaku.com.my to enable the development of local content, to take advantage of social networking platforms and tools to connect to other communities and to promote the generation of new ideas or opportunities. It also created a quarterly local print newsletter, Suara Chini Timur also to generate local content, as a marketing and promotion tool to generate interest and acceptance from the local community, and to complement the community portal.

As for community activities, during the June school holidays the P1 CBC held programmes for story writing, labeling of computer components, speed typing, screened animated video movies and ran on-line crossword puzzles. Then in July the centre held cooking lessons for the women with Chef Halim, to provide creative activities at the centre, to raise awareness amongst the community's women in how the community can help them obtain information and to demonstrate how Internet and other technologies can help them communicate with others, share information and use it in their daily lives whilst at the same time develop their digital skills.

“We've observed a more close-knit CBC community beginning to flourish, community members affirm and value CBC activities to benefit the community, the CBC is becoming the ICT support and reference centre for most community members, though the majority of adult community members above 40)have yet to
use CBC facilities and services,” said Lorraine.

“Moving forward, we will implement more community-centric programmes based community feedback, developing parameters of an impact study, conduct intensive awareness & outreach programmes, continue with publication of Suara Chini Timur and further enhance the the Desaku portal,” she added.