KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 30 – The Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Seri Dr Salleh Said Keruak on Tuesday said that Malaysian government is focusing on speed, coverage and affordability on the nation’s Internet development and will ensure that by 2020, at least 95 per cent of Malaysians will have Internet access.
“The government also wants to ensure that at least 50 per cent of urban areas and 20 per cent of rural areas have broadband speeds of 100 megabits per second (Mbps). Malaysia’s focus is speed, coverage and affordability. That means cost (affordability) is one point that I am looking at, which is also the point the that (veteran DAP leader) Lim Kit Siang is talking about,” he said in his latest blog posting, sskeruak.blogspot.my, here on Tuesday night.
He said in Malaysia, Internet penetration is 67 per cent of the population. Even though, it was still below South Korea (92 per cent), Brunei (75 per cent), Japan (86 per cent), Singapore (80 per cent), and Taiwan (80 per cent), Malaysia was definitely ahead of the rest of Asia, he added.
“The average Internet penetration for the whole of Asia is only 38.8 percent and 73.5 percent for the whole of Europe and of course North America is ahead of the rest of the world at 87.9 percent. As I said yesterday, we are planning to give 95 percent of Malaysians Internet service by 2020, which is only five years from now. Meanwhile, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) plans to spend about RM9 billion by 2020 to achieve this,” he said.
Taking the advantage of a report about Malaysia’s poor standing in Internet speeds – 70th place worldwide – on Sunday, Lim. who is also the MP of Gelang Patah, had criticised Salleh for being preoccupied with propaganda work for the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak instead of improving the country’s Internet infrastructure.
