Fahmi Fadzil, Communications and Digital Minister, reaffirmed the public that internet prices is expected to drop come September this year. The reduction in prices for access to the internet will be in line with the Mandatory Standard on Access Pricing (MSAP).
The MSAP was first announced several months ago, back in February to be exact, with the plans to make the internet more broadly accessible to folks that fall within the B40 category. That being said, we’re coming up to the fifth month since its announcement, yet no significant changes have been made to retail broadband plans in the country.
Kesian M40 , apa habuk pun takda
— Troll Ranger (@nhk1983) March 30, 2023
As to why this issue with internet pricing is taking so long, that’s because the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) is still in the midst of publishing reference access offers (RAO) and negotiations of access agreements will only be concluded based on published RAO. These negotiations are only expected to be finalised in the month of September.
The new MSAP has been a long-awaited revision, given that the last major change to it was made five years ago, when Gobind Singh was still in holding office. With it, the reduction in wholesale pricing for High Speed Broadband (HSBB) should internet options far more affordable, and with faster speeds to boot.
TM, in particular, published its RAO last week and as you can see from the image above, it is using a tiered-pricing structure with the aim of enticing providers that can afford high bandwidth volume. As an example, the company will charge providers a monthly fee of RM8 per Mbps, as they fall within the 499,999 Mbps category, while provider that are able to deliver 9,000,000 Mbps, or 9 Tbps, will only need to pay RM2.55 per Mbps. To put it in another way, that’s RM800 per month for 100Mbps for low monthly volume providers and RM255 per month for high monthly volume providers.
(Source: Twitter, SoyaCincau)
