I spoke to one of Celcom’s Product Development managers last week and he revealed that Celcom was working on a project that will be unveiled at the end of the month. HSDPA perhaps? I’m guessing it will more likely be a major content deal since they’ve demonstrated great savvy in their recent marketing tie-ups.
You heard it here first 😉
Yesterday the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) announced the 4 winners of licenses to operate the 2.3GHz WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) spectrum in Malaysia (PDF link to news release).
The 4 winners were:
The bigger news is that none of the 3 telecom companies in Malaysia won a license. The failure to obtain a WiMAX license isn’t that big a deal to TM and Maxis, who both have 3G licenses, but DiGi has really been left out in the cold again, having failed to win a 3G license also previously. It really looks like our Government doesn’t want any foreigners to have a too big foothold in Malaysian telecommunications. My heart goes out to DiGi – I’m an unabashed DiGi fanboy – but they say they’ll be ok.
The four winners are expected to spend between RM250-RM300 million each to roll out wireless broadband services based on WiMAX in the next 3 years and the MCMC says that their decision is in line with their goal that broadband penetration increases to 75% by 2010 (keep hoping).
My take: I’m actually disappointed that none of the telcos won a license. I think that a telco that also operates a wireless broadband service will usher in fixed-mobile convergence in Malaysia quicker. With WiMAX being operated by the telcos competitors, I’m afraid that switching between cellular and wireless broadband will be less than seamless.
If anything, I hope the news will spur TM Net (the damn slackers!) to buck up its services.
Malaysian banking giant Maybank has launched myzone, a financial portal for teenagers aged 12-18. The launch comes with a web design contest where the public can submit ideas/designs for the myzone website.
Personally, I think that the design is ok, but the code is from the last decade. Table-based design, obtrusive Javascript and so many popups! And site organisation is crap too, I can’t even find a page with info on the contest to link to.
It’s the Starbucks Coffee Break and Starbucks Malaysia is giving each customer who walks into its stores between 10am and 12pm on Thursday, 15 March, a freshly-brewed, tall Coffee of the Week for free!
If your SmartTAG doesn’t register when crossing the first toll on the KL-Seremban highway, you’ll incur a penalty that depletes the amount of remaining credit left on your Touch ‘n Go card. Don’t ask me how I know.
Development turning up the heat on Malaysian cities:
Rapid development and the lack of trees are turning these cities into urban heat islands (UHI) that are hot even at night.
The average temperature in the morning is between 24 °C and 27 °C while in the afternoon, it increases from 33 °C to 40 °C and starts dropping slowly at night. Kuala Lumpur’s night heat can even be at 30 °C.
Die la..
Astro subscribers may find several of their channels have gone missing and instead have a black screen due to the satellite service’s recent migration from Measat-1 to the new Measat-3. Luckily, there’s a simple fix.
Finally, a clear answer to haze.
After countless meetings and talks over the past 11 years, Asean has finally come up with the most tangible plan so far to fight the region’s annual haze problem.
I hope this works.
Here’s an example of a self-perpetuating conclusion: Troubled students are surveyed, troubled students admit to pre-marital sex, researchers don’t compare with ‘good students’ who are probably doing the same things, researcher concludes the following:
Most Female Students With Disciplinary Problems Admit To Having Sex
The Star’s article, Googling for growth, looks like one of those articles where the PR team exchange high fives and back slaps because they’ve spun what seems to be a great story, and succeeds in pushing up the company’s stock price.
The story is about Malaysian e-marketplace provider AsiaEP Bhd, who is launching their it@h B2B search engine. The article talks about how qualified AsiaEP is to create this search engine and goes so far to dub AsiaEP the ‘Malaysian Google’.
The article quotes Managing Director Dr Bernard Tan as saying:
What we have done over the last 10 years is to create a search engine exclusively related to business and manufacturing purposes. We are likely the first in the world to create a business search engine with a simplified format.
The article goes on to talk about the revenue potential of the company and ends with this paragraph:
Teoh is expecting AsiaEP’s FY08 and FY09 net profit to grow by 194.7% and 115.2% year-on-year to RM10.1mil and RM21.8mil respectively : “We believe the assumptions underlying our forecast are conservative as we assume AsiaEP to garner just 0.2% and 0.5% of global B2B paid search market share in FY08 and FY09 respectively.�
My first thought when reading this article is that AsiaEP is putting the horse before the cart a bit. At the moment their search engine doesn’t even work very well – it returns results from trade directories and e-marketplaces mainly, and I don’t find the results are relevant as they claimed. Compare a search for “plastics supplier Malaysia” on it@h and on Google.
So their product doesn’t work great yet and they’re already singing about their earnings prospects? Like I said, good work for the PR team. Until then, I’ll be watching to see how this ‘Malaysian Google’ will do in the next few years.
I’m David a.k.a. the blogjunkie. This is my personal blog where I let my hair down. I’m an entrepreneur making a living from the internet, without the scammy get rich quick, make money online methods. I’m an Apple fanboy, and WordPress geek.
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