GEORGE TOWN, Oct 3 – Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng attended the Signing Ceremony Of Non-Disclosure Agreement on Friday morning at Cititel Hotel Penang. Also present were Penang State Secretary YB Dato’ Farizan bin Darus, Penang Local Government, TrafficManagement and Flood Mitigation Committee chairman YB Chow Kon Yeow and Penang Executive Councillor for Works, Utility and Transportation YB Lim Hock Seng.
Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng announced that Penang is a developing country and to become a world-class city. Parallel to this, He said they can not deny that the telecommunications is one of the components that need to be upgraded in line with sustainable development to ensure the sustainability of the current evolution of telecommunications technology.
The State Government has been taking measures and initiatives such as the moratorium on the Second Phase, Procurement Guidelines and Checklist for the construction of new telecommunications structures and Implementation Installation of Fiber Forward Penang (FFP).
As such measures, the State Government has created a special platform that State Telecommunications Council (PCC) to facilitate the communication of two cooperation between the State and the Telecommunications Industry. PCC facilitate the State Governments in monitoring and ensuring local authorities (LAs) and technical agencies may require the state to implement FFP State.
Lim said Penang to ensure that the work of the implementation of this FFP carried out successfully, the state government will sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with 11 Telcos on Friday at Cititel Hotel Penang. Meanwhile, he said with this goal NDA cooperation between all Telco become stronger.
At the same time, he said that the State can carry out installation of fiber across the state with current and thereby achieve a more regular Smart City with a developed economy, education, construction, telecommunications and infrastructure. In addition, he said it is a city of innovative and highly skilled, which will provide a direct impact on environmental sustainability.
“Among the main features of Smart City is a high-tech facilities, a central ICT, research and development R & D, technology and other fiber. We also hopes that better internet speed equivalent and equivalent to international standards if Malaysia is to achieve the vision of a developed nation by 2020,” said Lim.
“It is deplorable that the Communications and Multimedia Minister said that Malaysia leading the Asian continent when he stated in a slow Internet speeds as 71% can not afford to pay more for faster speeds. This is surprising because it is not true. In Singapore, people pay much less than the people of Malaysia for faster Internet speeds,” he said.
“Example 1 Mbps Strreamyx by TM is RM116.60 per month compared with S $ 50 (RM156) for a 1 gigabit-per-second fiber broadband (broadband), faster with lower costs.The challenge is why Malaysians have to pay more for slower Internet speeds. There should be more capable Internet speed if Malaysia wants to lead Asia as alleged by the Minister,” he added.
Besides that, YB Chow Kon Yeow also said that the policy of the Fiber Forward Penang (FFP) is triggered by emphasizing three key points that no element of monopoly which are included One Dig Policy and balance and accessibility of telecommunications network records.
He said the main objective of FFP program is to avoid using the old method which scraping the roads that it may caused the damaged of the road. He said it was replaced with a new method of trenching, which enables world-class broadband services. In the same time, he also said that the most important is the cooperation among telecommunications companies.
In the meanwhile, he also said that they will try their best to implement the speed of minimum 1000 Mbps. He said that they will based the zone to work on with one company infrastructure and another company to focus on the data plan. In additional, Lim also added that now the industry was moving to creating area which are cloud computing, big data analytics and also Internet of Things (IoT). Lastly he said he hope that it will be a big change for Penang.
