BUKIT JALIL, 23 Feb: Some local authorities are a hindrance to broadband rollout, Minister of Information, Communications and Culture. Dato' Seri Utama Dr. Rais Yatim told the media, whilst officiating at the amax City launch at Technology Park Malaysia here today.

“The procedures involved in operators installing a base station include rental of the land, submitting their plans for approval, meeting additional conditions and receiving the permit and whilst this normally takes between four to six months, a local authority has been known to have dragged this process out for four years, and investigations have found instance of hanky panky in some cases,” said Dr. Rais.

“Most local authorities create issues in urban areas,” he added.

On the relatively high broadband costs in Malaysia compared to neighbouring countries, Dr. Rais said that the the regulator, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (SKMM) could look into equipment and other broadband costs, while based on information from the advanced countries, the more players there are, the better is the broadband quality.

“The cost of broadband must vary from community to community, with lower rates in rural areas, and higher rates elsewhere, Said Dr. Rais.

Speaking as one of the players, Asiaspace chairman Datuk Ghani Abdullah said that his company pays Telekom Malaysia RM200,000 for a backhaul link from its base stations within the Klang Valley plus RM50,000 per month for access to the international gateway. Asiaspace owns and operates the amax WiMAX wireless broadband service and currently has 60 base stations within the Klang Valley and 70 towers in the rest of the country.

“Another cost is the rental of space to place the base stations, since landlords are asking for as much as RM6,000 per month rental, when a fair price would be from RM2,000 to RM3,000 per month,” said Datuk Abdul Ghani. “Also, the government of a state which I won't name, told us to work with a state-owned company on space to put our towers,” he added.

Cellular and WiMAX operators usually rent roof space on commercial buildings such as shoplots to place their base stations, since they are not allowed to install them on residential premises due to radiation and other concerns, and with the fairly short 1.5km radial coverage of WiMAX base stations, this limits their ability to provide extensive coverage, especially of residential areas compared to cellular base stations which have a longer range, hence patchy WiMAX coverage.

Each of its Mobile WiMAX base stations costs around RM400,000 to install, including the civil works, tower and equipment.

The Minister said that to save costs, operators could share towers.

On the question of a common trenching policy for Malaysia, such as the common ducting policy adopted in Taiwan, Dr. Rais said that the government is looking into this.

In Taiwan, the government owns the telecommunications ducts, which operators rent space in to run their fibres and cables at the same rate, which creates a level playing field for healthy competition. Such a common ducting policy is like the roads and highways which are government owned, upon which various operators compete to provide bus, lorry, taxi, logistics or other transport services upon.

However, the federal nature of Malaysia makes it difficult for the federal government to dictate a common ducting policy on the governments of each of its 13 states. “However, such a policy must be made a national policy within the framework of the policies of each state government,” said Dr. Rais.