WiMax spectrum in Malaysia

Someone was asking me about the WiMax service provisioning in peninsular Malaysia. Will the 3 companies who have been awarded WiMax licence to operate in Peninsular to operate at the same place?

Well first, we look at the spectrum assignment (http://www.mcmc.gov.my/Admin/WhatIsNew/20374698WiMax%20Press%20release_160307_final_v2.pdf) :
In peninsular Malaysia, Bizsurf was awarded the 2330 to 2360 bandwidth, MIB 2360 to 2390 MHz, and Asiaspace 2300 to 2330 MHz. Meanwhile in East Malaysia, Redtone-CNX was awarded the 2375 to 2400 MHz bandwidth.

Judging from the overlapping of frequency band and near adjacent system frequency, the 3 service providers in peninsular Malaysia will have to coordinate in order to avoid excessive interference among the different networks. In addition, the subscriber market may be too small for the 3 service providers to install their own set of equipment. As discussed earlier, sharing of network equipment among the operators and let the radio network be planned by a company may be a way to achieve optimum network performance. Anyway, the actual deployment may subject to many commercial and political influences.

Can Wimax helps us improve broadband penetration rate?

The MyICMS plan hoped to achieve a household broadband penetration of 75% by 2010.
Accoding to MCMC, as at Q2 2007, there are 1.1 million (4.1% of population) broadband subscribers in the country. This is equivalent to only 12.8% household penetration.

Referring to the statistics from MCMC below (source: MCMC), the ADSL penetration has not increased much over the last few quarters. With the same rate of increment, we will not expect ADSL service to contribute much toward the target of MyICMS. However, we noted that the number of Wireless LAN subscribers has increased significantly over the last few quarters indicating the willingness of users trying out alternative broadband wireless access solution.

Most existing WLAN solutions are mainly WiFi based with no mobility support, limited coverage area, short coverage range, and relatively low transmission rate, typically at 11Mbps or 54Mbps. The actual throughput will be even lower, i.e. about half of the transmission rate.

The general public is hoping that WiMax service which has been planned to be available by end of this year will provide a better alternative to them . WiMax has much more to offer compared to WiFi: longer range, wider coverage area, higher speed of up to 75Mbps (depend on amount of spectrum allocated), mobility support and higher security. However, there are other factors that determine the success of a wireless broadband service provisioning business. One should not forget that there may be lack of low cost modem at this moment.

In addition, from the past history of broadband wireless service provisioning in Malaysia, we learn that sound business plan is one of the prerequisite for successful business operation. Should the operators depend too much on foreign technology and experts in service provisioning, they may follow the path of other pioneer of wireless broadband service providers toward failure. This will definitely hamper the effort of Malaysian government in achieving the 75% household penetration rate by 2010.

Wimax: sharing of infrastruture by service providers

Malaysia's four Wimax licence holders (Asiaspace Dotcom Sdn Bhd, Redtone-CNX Broadband Sdn Bhd, Bizsurf (M) Sdn Bhd (a unit of YTL Corp) and Packet One Networks Sdn Bhd (formerly known as MIB Comm)) have set up a consortium to build a common infrastructure for their wireless broadband service.

As the Wimax ISP are providing service in different location, it is not possible for them to share the transmit towers or base station locations. However, they can share the usage of high speed backbone network. This make economic sense from trunking point of view as the backbone connection may not be fully utilised by any operator at any moment.