SCCyberworld

Thursday, November 21, 2013

TM PROVIDES HIGH SPEED BROADBAND SERVICES TO FORMIS; TRUE TO ITS PROMISE OF OPEN ACCESS

Agreement set to provide FORMIS the ability to launch Ohana into the Malaysian broadband market 

Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) today further strengthened its position as a neutral service provider when the Company signed another High Speed Broadband (HSBB) service agreement this time with Formis Development Sdn Bhd (Formis), a member of Formis Resources Berhad.

Under this agreement, TM will be providing HSBB (Access) and HSBB (Transmission) services as well as Wholesale Internet Access to Formis. The collaboration will pave the way for Formis to extend its fibre-based service offering – Ohana – in Malaysia to over 1.456 million premises covered by the HSBB service including the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) segment, hence fulfilling the increasing demand for High Speed Broadband services in the market.

Rozaimy Rahman, Executive Vice President, Global & Wholesale, TM (right) and Steven Pun, Chief Executive Officer, Formis Development Sdn Bhd, at the recent signing between Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) and Formis Development Sdn Bhd for the provisioning of HSBB and Wholesale Internet Access services.

Inking the agreement on behalf of TM was Rozaimy Rahman, Executive Vice President, Global & Wholesale, whilst Formis Development Sdn Bhd was represented by its Chief Executive Officer, Steven Pun. The signing ceremony was witnessed by Rossman Omar, Vice President of Carrier Sales, G&W, TM and Monteiro Gerard Clair, Executive Director, Formis Resources Bhd.

Speaking at the event, Rozaimy said; “Today’s signing comes as a result of the initiative taken by both TM and Formis, marking yet another milestone in the rollout of the national HSSB project, which was officially launched in 2010.

Formis has entrusted TM with providing the platform for its customers, including those from the SME segment and residential customers to enjoy IP-based value added services in HSBB areas nationwide. In addition, TM will also be providing a minimum capacity of 1Gbps for Wholesale Internet Access (WIA) services for the delivery of Formis’ Ohana offering, and it is upgradable based on the end customers’ requirements and demand thus, enabling them to enjoy better surfing experience. This three (3) year partnership reiterates TM’s promise of opening access to all MCMC-licensed access seekers regardless of size, as mentioned under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP).”

Commenting on the signing, Steven Pun said, “SMEs represent over 95 percent of the firms in Malaysia and contribute over 30 percent to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, due to the limitation in purchasing power and access to the appropriate infrastructure, most of the SME players are not able to get the best end-to-end broadband solutions with greater flexibility at competitive prices. Through our agreement with TM, we will be able to offer reliable fibre broadband services at vastly superior speeds and very affordable prices.”

“By using the HSBB network / infrastructure as a platform, through Ohana, Formis will offer fibre broadband service specifically designed to meet the needs of SME customers and end users in Malaysia. Our end-to-end solutions offer the speeds and guaranteed bandwidth that these businesses need to leverage on in generating innovative applications and reducing their operating costs. The consistency of speed will be delivered through the prioritisation of business traffic while highly competitive pricing and packages help them to minimise overheads; all of this is backed by our 99.99 percent Service Level Agreement (SLA) with TM. As a result of this partnership with TM, we are able to roll out Ohana within a greatly accelerated time frame,” Pun said while adding that the Ohana suite of broadband services will be rolled out to business customers by the end of November 2013.

The agreement will also see TM providing Data Centre and Call Centre services to Formis via TM’s Managed ICT and BPO arm, VADS Berhad (VADS), where it will provide end-to-end solutions to Formis in the form of facilities for its servers and Call Centre agents for its Customer Service or Careline.

The agreement which was sealed via the My1Hub offering marks TM’s other initiative in positioning Malaysia as a World Class Data Centre Hub. This is in line with the Government’s vision to further improve the connectivity of telecommunications in Malaysia as well as internationally. With My1Hub, it will bring more advantages and in return, Ohana will develop and expand its business in order to facilitate the various needs of global and domestic end users.

This initiative will allow other Access Seekers to provide and deliver their value-added services and applications such as IPTV, Video-On-Demand, Online Gaming and many more to end users, which enable them to experience the services and applications across different service providers. It also opens the door for a fair level playing field in the market as consumers will have more options to choose, based quality of service, extent of coverage, range of features and most competitive price.

This collaboration foresees various benefits not only to end customers but also SMEs who will enjoy guaranteed quality of service, extensive coverage, a wide range of service features and highly competitive pricing. Ultimately, this will bring an enriched digital lifestyle to the end-users, thus elevating the nation’s global competitiveness to greater heights in supporting the Government’s aspiration to increase national broadband penetration rates to 75% by 2015.

For further information on TM, visit www.tm.com.my.

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