KUALA LUMPUR - Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) has been
given a licence to offer Internet access in Malaysia - the first foreign
telco to enter the previously closed local Internet Service Provider (ISP)
market.
The giant Japanese telco received the "class licence" on August 17 from
Malaysian regulator Communications and Multimedia Commission (CMC).
NTT MSC Sdn Bhd president and chief executive Hotta Akio told ZDNet Asia the
company will be providing Internet access under the brand name Arcnet from
mid-September with an official launch set for November.
NTT MSC, is a subsidiary of the NTT's
long-distance and global carrier group NTT Communications Corp.
Class licences which came into force on August 4 effectively opens the
market to foreign players, encouraging more competition and providing
consumers with more choices.
Malaysia previously allowed ISP licences to only five local telcos, namely,
Telekom Malaysia, Maxis, DiGi, TimedotCom and TRI, and one state-funded
research house Mimos Bhd.
The CMC distinguishes "class licences" from those earlier licences as a
"light-handed regulation, striking the balance between free market forces
and tight regulation."
Potential service providers now only need to register
with the CMC for RM2500 (US$658) for the one-year licence which is renewable.
Akio said Arcnet will be targeted at densely-populated and
industrial-concentrated areas. "Our first target markets are corporate
customers in industrial-concentrated areas but if the public wants high
quality Internet services they can also apply," he said.
Akio said the Arcnet service will not just be about Internet access but will
incorporate datawarehousing, electronic payment infrastructure systems, and
a portal with, among other things, a multilingual machine translation engine
and live baseball updates from Japan.
NTT MSC is targeting 5,000 to 10,000 customers by year-end. "We're
being modest because we don't want to take on too many users and compromise
our quality of services. Right now our resources are ready to support 10,000
users but if the response is great we will scale up proportionately," said
NTT MSC product development manager Victor San.
Akio said its datawarehousing service is targeted at dot-coms and new
start-ups coming up in the Southeast Asian region. "We've already signed on
several US multinationals and regional players and we hope to expand the
numbers," he said.
NTT MSC was first incorporated in July 1997 to spearhead the telco's
research activities for Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor
project, a 750 sq km high-tech zone south of Kuala Lumpur, which has already
drawn some of the biggest IT and telco players in the world. The research
center is NTT's second-largest overseas R&D facility following
NTT America.
Akio said the company has already grown from an initial 30 to 100 staff and
plans to invest up to RM100 million (US$26 million) on its
operations by 2002. "If we are successful, we will definitely expand on staff
and resources."
NTT MSC conducted a free trial of its new Internet service in July which
will end by mid-September.
The Arcnet service will be headquartered at NTT
MSC research center in Cyberjaya with nodes in Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Johore
and Shah Alam.
NTT MSC already serves many Japanese firms operating in the Kuala Lumpur and
Penang, providing them with local area network and Intranet site
construction, system maintenance and systems integration services.
It also
offers managed frame relay, managed ATM, virtual private networks and IP
backbone services under the brand name Arcstar.
NTT Communications recently announced it was spurned by Malaysia's largest
carrier Telekom Malaysia for a stake in the state-controlled telco because
"agreement on certain key strategic issues could not be reached".
Published in ZDNet Asia
