WiMax and HSBB Project in Malaysia

I just wrote to expressed my on opinion on the WiMax and High Speed Broadband (HSBB)project that has taken much of the news line in Malaysia recently. It is very clear indeed on the government vision to roll out its National Broadband Plan into execution in order to increase the Broadband penetration and Internet Connectivity in the country. WiMax operating license was issued two years ago to four local operators namely AsiaSpace, Green Packet, Redtone and YTL.
However, it took sometime for these companies to roll out the network as they were waiting for Equipment Vendors to complete market ready non-standard 2.3Ghz Radio Base Station Equipment and Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) in to production. The 2.3Ghz WiMax frequency was selected base on the Korean Standard not the Universal Standard that operate in 2.5 Ghz and 3.5 Ghz. In view of the pressure by the Government thhrough Ministry of Energy, Communication and Water and regulating body MCMC, WiMax licensees are forced to roll out the services although the 2.3Ghz System might be fully ready yet resulting some WiMax operators still roll out the service using what they called a Pre-Wimax Solution (WiFi 2.4 Ghz System0 that operate in specific Hot Zone. When I look at the price offered to potential subscribers is still not so competetitive compared to cable ADSL currently offered by TM Streamyx.

At the same time the government is awarding a RM 11 Billion HSBB project to Telekom Malaysia to provide really High Speed Boroadband Service using fiber optic. Even this project has many co-tenders such as the Pahang State Government through its State Link Company claimed that they can do the same job through Private Funding Initialtive without the need to use tax payers money as in the case if the project is given to Telekom Malaysia. Another Party called Optical Communication Engineering (OCE) also claims that they submitted the same proposal to implement HSBB at much cheaper cost than that given to Telekom Malaysia.

The irony of the above cases is that Malaysian despite trying to be a developed nation in 2020 is still like to make some kind of decision that detrimental to the achievement of the 2020 Vision.
The National Broadband Plan is fantastic but the execution of the policy is rather hasty such as rolling Pre-WiMax Service because the chosen WiMax 2.3 Ghz is not ready yet.