TEFD: What are your expectations for 2012, for your company and your industry?
Bazlan: We foresee the outlook for 2012 is positive. Growth is seen for the domestic telecoms industry and is reflected in the expanding market size.
The telecoms market size is forecast to grow to RM30 billion from RM27.4 billion in 2010, while the information and communications technology (ICT) market is expected to grow to RM31.4 billion from RM25.1 billion in 2010. The broadband market, meanwhile, is forecast to grow to RM6.23 billion.
For TM, 2011 was a phenomenal year in terms of broadband growth, as we saw our total broadband customers reaching 1.9 million. This was on the better-than-expected take-up of our triple-play service, UniFi, which now stands at over 227,000.
TM sees UniFi as not only a broadband access service, but also as an enabler for enriched and enhanced online experience for our customers. We’re positioning our HyppTV offering as the gateway for this, giving customers an integrated digital-lifestyle experience.
The true age of convergence is here. Customers now expect to access their content and info from any device at anytime, everywhere and TM aims to be the key enabler to delivering this. More applications and solutions can ride on better broadband services (higher bandwidth) enriching customers’ digital lifestyles.
Superior high speed broadband (HSBB) connectivity will spur small and medium enterprises to offer services to their end users as well as subscribe to our managed services, like cloud. We see content as another area for growth in 2012. We foresee that the content service delivery platform (CSDP — My1Content) will spur local content and application hub growth among producers, increase content-related transactions and raise demand for bandwidth among consumers.
The competitive landscape continues to evolve with the entrance of new players into the market and we expect a continual healthy competition from fellow broadband providers, from mobile to WiMAX.
A lot of operators are moving towards the service-oriented business model. We can see this trend as more operators are venturing into new areas such as cloud computing, content delivery and IPTV. The market acceptance of the managed and outsourcing business model for IT and business processes is also slowly improving. We anticipate an increasing take-up for managed and outsourcing business model in Malaysia, as more enterprises realise their value.
Cloud computing is another area expected to perform well in 2012. TM became the first Malaysian telco to offer comprehensive three-layer cloud services and a technology neutral cloud infrastructure. Further to that, through wholly-owned subsidiary VADS Bhd, TM has entered into a collaboration with Mimos to develop an orchestration platform for VADS cloud computing services.
Overall, we operate in a highly competitive market, where voice revenues are maturing rapidly, Internet competition is fierce and a preference to mobile services, besides the fact that globally the overall economic environment remains uncertain. Competition among the telcos is most intensive in the race to win and retain customers.
What are the main challenges for the company?
Competition is our main challenge as more mobile and wireless providers introduce their products and services into the market.
The broadband marketplace for 2011 was highly competitive, with some of our rivals cutting prices to gain market share. However, as seen in more mature markets, we believe that fixed and wireless broadband services are actually complementary as the needs and requirements of customers are varied.
Fixed-line services provide consumers with pipes to utilise heavy content and applications, while wireless service providers give consumers the flexibility to utilise broadband on the go. In fact, by increasing the rate of broadband penetration in the country, all providers stand to gain bigger shares from the larger pie. Hence, there is a place for fixed and mobile broadband in every customer’s needs.
However, the wireless players are not without their own set of challenges, such as limited capacity due to the tremendous growth in data and Internet traffic. TM has the opportunity to help them manage that traffic on our networks.
We will see a new age of collaboration among industry players in many areas of infrastructure and services, facilitated by the regulatory environment and for the ultimate benefit of Malaysian consumers. Though we compete at the retail end, we also have been the enabler for some of them through our wholesale arm by providing backhaul and access services.
Right now, the industry is at the inflection point of moving from legacy digital to an Internet protocol- (IP) based network. With IP-based network, it is expected to completely reshape the present structure of communications systems and access to the Internet. TM itself recently migrated its core network to the latest IP network infrastructure.
Within this dynamic landscape, we have to embrace this development and ask our commercial teams to constantly improve their go-to-market model, and be faster and better at piloting and testing new offerings. Moving forward, what is important for us is to step up our efforts and continue to challenge ourselves to be more innovative and creative in providing services that cater to our customers’ lifestyles.
What are the company’s plans and focus for 2012?
Our focus for 2012 will still be on broadband, coupled with efforts to enhance our customer experience.
We remain steadfast in maintaining our position as Malaysia’s broadband champion anchoring on Streamyx and UniFi as our key broadband products, delivering an enhanced and integrated digital lifestyle to all Malaysians where everyone can leverage on the platform to connect, communicate and collaborate effectively; while focusing on a transformation journey to be a new generation telco and an information exchange.
We will continue to leverage on our infrastructure, collective expertise and reach to improve the company’s footing in ICT and business process outsourcing services for the business/enterprise segment via our ICT arm, VADS. The next step is to stack up the current services with innovative applications to provide an ever enriching customer experience with TM, be it with the consumer products and services or with the business/enterprise offering.
TM is also positioning itself to be the regional IP hub of choice by leveraging on its extensive global network infrastructure and assets to meet the increasingly sophisticated demand of global carriers and enterprise customers. TM recently entered into a collaboration to set up a distributed global server network to place content closer to web users.
We will also continue to focus on the entire customer experience and will pursue our quality improvement programmes in our effort to deliver an enhanced customer experience.
In 2010, we spent 5.1% or RM451 million of our revenue to that end in line with our key performance indicator guidance. Over and above just spending alone, we will continue to improve our end-to-end processes, right from the sales to delivery to installation and service provisioning under our programme ACE — Achieving Customer Experience. We will also continue to address the “pain points” in our delivery as part of our overall service improvement initiatives.
What is your wish list for 2012?
Moving into 2012, we hope to maintain our leadership position as Malaysia’s broadband champion with the continuing success of our UniFi and Streamyx as well as HSBB project. We also hope to lay a strong foundation to achieve the company’s transformation towards becoming an information exchange.
As the country’s leading telecommunications company, we also have a national wish list. Apart from infrastructure sharing, we think that it is time that we in Malaysia consider content sharing.
We believe that as per what is being practised in the infrastructure network, all licensed broadcasters should be given fair access to content — local or international content channels.
One may argue that in the US, there are hundreds of cable channels with different content offerings but they are addressing over 300 million people.
The market in Malaysia is limited and the user demographics and behaviour are rather uniform. If the government could do something about liberating content exclusivity, TM will be able to satisfy the needs of Malaysian viewers alongside other service providers in the same space.
Bazlan: We foresee the outlook for 2012 is positive. Growth is seen for the domestic telecoms industry and is reflected in the expanding market size.
The telecoms market size is forecast to grow to RM30 billion from RM27.4 billion in 2010, while the information and communications technology (ICT) market is expected to grow to RM31.4 billion from RM25.1 billion in 2010. The broadband market, meanwhile, is forecast to grow to RM6.23 billion.
For TM, 2011 was a phenomenal year in terms of broadband growth, as we saw our total broadband customers reaching 1.9 million. This was on the better-than-expected take-up of our triple-play service, UniFi, which now stands at over 227,000.
TM sees UniFi as not only a broadband access service, but also as an enabler for enriched and enhanced online experience for our customers. We’re positioning our HyppTV offering as the gateway for this, giving customers an integrated digital-lifestyle experience.
The true age of convergence is here. Customers now expect to access their content and info from any device at anytime, everywhere and TM aims to be the key enabler to delivering this. More applications and solutions can ride on better broadband services (higher bandwidth) enriching customers’ digital lifestyles.
Superior high speed broadband (HSBB) connectivity will spur small and medium enterprises to offer services to their end users as well as subscribe to our managed services, like cloud. We see content as another area for growth in 2012. We foresee that the content service delivery platform (CSDP — My1Content) will spur local content and application hub growth among producers, increase content-related transactions and raise demand for bandwidth among consumers.
The competitive landscape continues to evolve with the entrance of new players into the market and we expect a continual healthy competition from fellow broadband providers, from mobile to WiMAX.
A lot of operators are moving towards the service-oriented business model. We can see this trend as more operators are venturing into new areas such as cloud computing, content delivery and IPTV. The market acceptance of the managed and outsourcing business model for IT and business processes is also slowly improving. We anticipate an increasing take-up for managed and outsourcing business model in Malaysia, as more enterprises realise their value.
Cloud computing is another area expected to perform well in 2012. TM became the first Malaysian telco to offer comprehensive three-layer cloud services and a technology neutral cloud infrastructure. Further to that, through wholly-owned subsidiary VADS Bhd, TM has entered into a collaboration with Mimos to develop an orchestration platform for VADS cloud computing services.
Overall, we operate in a highly competitive market, where voice revenues are maturing rapidly, Internet competition is fierce and a preference to mobile services, besides the fact that globally the overall economic environment remains uncertain. Competition among the telcos is most intensive in the race to win and retain customers.
What are the main challenges for the company?
Competition is our main challenge as more mobile and wireless providers introduce their products and services into the market.
The broadband marketplace for 2011 was highly competitive, with some of our rivals cutting prices to gain market share. However, as seen in more mature markets, we believe that fixed and wireless broadband services are actually complementary as the needs and requirements of customers are varied.
Fixed-line services provide consumers with pipes to utilise heavy content and applications, while wireless service providers give consumers the flexibility to utilise broadband on the go. In fact, by increasing the rate of broadband penetration in the country, all providers stand to gain bigger shares from the larger pie. Hence, there is a place for fixed and mobile broadband in every customer’s needs.
However, the wireless players are not without their own set of challenges, such as limited capacity due to the tremendous growth in data and Internet traffic. TM has the opportunity to help them manage that traffic on our networks.
We will see a new age of collaboration among industry players in many areas of infrastructure and services, facilitated by the regulatory environment and for the ultimate benefit of Malaysian consumers. Though we compete at the retail end, we also have been the enabler for some of them through our wholesale arm by providing backhaul and access services.
Right now, the industry is at the inflection point of moving from legacy digital to an Internet protocol- (IP) based network. With IP-based network, it is expected to completely reshape the present structure of communications systems and access to the Internet. TM itself recently migrated its core network to the latest IP network infrastructure.
Within this dynamic landscape, we have to embrace this development and ask our commercial teams to constantly improve their go-to-market model, and be faster and better at piloting and testing new offerings. Moving forward, what is important for us is to step up our efforts and continue to challenge ourselves to be more innovative and creative in providing services that cater to our customers’ lifestyles.
Bazlan: Apart from infrastructure sharing, we think it is time that we in Malaysia consider content sharing.
What are the company’s plans and focus for 2012?
Our focus for 2012 will still be on broadband, coupled with efforts to enhance our customer experience.
We remain steadfast in maintaining our position as Malaysia’s broadband champion anchoring on Streamyx and UniFi as our key broadband products, delivering an enhanced and integrated digital lifestyle to all Malaysians where everyone can leverage on the platform to connect, communicate and collaborate effectively; while focusing on a transformation journey to be a new generation telco and an information exchange.
We will continue to leverage on our infrastructure, collective expertise and reach to improve the company’s footing in ICT and business process outsourcing services for the business/enterprise segment via our ICT arm, VADS. The next step is to stack up the current services with innovative applications to provide an ever enriching customer experience with TM, be it with the consumer products and services or with the business/enterprise offering.
TM is also positioning itself to be the regional IP hub of choice by leveraging on its extensive global network infrastructure and assets to meet the increasingly sophisticated demand of global carriers and enterprise customers. TM recently entered into a collaboration to set up a distributed global server network to place content closer to web users.
We will also continue to focus on the entire customer experience and will pursue our quality improvement programmes in our effort to deliver an enhanced customer experience.
In 2010, we spent 5.1% or RM451 million of our revenue to that end in line with our key performance indicator guidance. Over and above just spending alone, we will continue to improve our end-to-end processes, right from the sales to delivery to installation and service provisioning under our programme ACE — Achieving Customer Experience. We will also continue to address the “pain points” in our delivery as part of our overall service improvement initiatives.
What is your wish list for 2012?
Moving into 2012, we hope to maintain our leadership position as Malaysia’s broadband champion with the continuing success of our UniFi and Streamyx as well as HSBB project. We also hope to lay a strong foundation to achieve the company’s transformation towards becoming an information exchange.
As the country’s leading telecommunications company, we also have a national wish list. Apart from infrastructure sharing, we think that it is time that we in Malaysia consider content sharing.
We believe that as per what is being practised in the infrastructure network, all licensed broadcasters should be given fair access to content — local or international content channels.
One may argue that in the US, there are hundreds of cable channels with different content offerings but they are addressing over 300 million people.
The market in Malaysia is limited and the user demographics and behaviour are rather uniform. If the government could do something about liberating content exclusivity, TM will be able to satisfy the needs of Malaysian viewers alongside other service providers in the same space.
