The Malaysian telecommunication industry was deregulated in 1998, it was at that time, The Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications created the Communications and Multimedia Commission (CMC) to regulate and monitor the converging technologies and multimedia services whilst at the same time it is also to spur competition between the incumbent operators and the newcomers in the industry.
Since the deregulation, many licenses were issued to credible applicants by CMC, but till now, we hardly see enough competition in the telecommunication industry. The incumbent players are still holding back in allowing any form of competition to take place. This is apparent in the barriers to network inter-connect (such as not allowing Maxis to call TM fixed lines, or Digi EDGE services not able to access websites hosted at Jaring) and infrastructure sharing like the local loop and communication towers.... new operators are not given the opportunity to co-exist... but all are slowly changing... the issues of the last mile solution where incumbent networks are not able to reach are solved through wireless technologies and other modes possible...
Over the years, many service operators had to resolve in having third party options such as Hutchinson Global Commnications, VSNL (formerly known as Teleglobe) and etc to have their traffic to the global network destinations and also to have the the local traffic routed internationally and then back into Malaysia from external links in order to access local contents. All because, incumbents do not allow others into their networks. A very clear example to note, Jaring has the powerful fiber nodes called SuperJaring all across Malaysia (861KM of IP-Over-Fibre network).. but it could not extend its services nationwide because it is operating independently because TM does not allow them to access the nationwide PSTN network that they have which led Jaring to explore wireless networks to provide their services (but still at a slow pace because of hefty investments needed).
MyIX, a recently launched on 15th December, is a new approach to the earlier Internet Exchange program established 6 years ago. This initiative is launched to ensure that local ISPs are in the collaborative spirit to inter-connect their networks with each other and improve the local internet traffic. MyIX will provide all operators with a cheaper cost of managing the data traffic (instead of paying external third party operators, we might as well support each other within this country).
Summary of MyIX are as follow :
MyIX Nodes: AIMS, Fiberail NCC, TPM Jaring
MyIX Founding Members: AIMS, TM, Jaring
MyIX Peering Members: Maxis, Time, Digi, Nasioncom, Heitech Padu, MyKris, Airzed, Extreme Broadband, VDSL, EBTech, Freenet, Bizsurf, Paneagle and CNX
This re-launch was an initiative spearheaded by AIMS (a neutral and independent communications exchange company - I think.. its hard to define them actually). I have had the opportunity ti share some sessions years back with the CEO of the company, Afzal Abdul Rahim, he is a young visionary with new ideas on improving the telecommunication services in Malaysia and taking it to the next level and his track record in AIMS has shown his capabilities to do that... I hope that the incumbent players could learn a thing or two from this guy.
And lets hope with MyIX, we Malaysians could get a better experience in our communication services and maybe with the lower routing costs to the operators, we get cheaper and efficient packages to come.
Only after that.. maybe we can talk about becoming a global hub..
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