KL, A Wireless City

According to Bernama, under an MOU signed with MCMC, Packet One Networks (P1) will be setting up many WiFi access points covering Kuala Lumpur and Klang Valley with the aim of increasing broadband coverage to 90 percent of the population by 2010.

Meanwhile, according to a newspaper report recently, P1 will be providing wireless access service by using a combination of WiMax and WiFi technologies.
P1, which is one of the 4 Wimax license holders. The other WiMax license holders are Bizsurf (M) Sdn Bhd, Asiaspace Dotcom Sdn Bhd and Redtone-CNX Broadband Sdn Bhd. Bizsurf, Packet One Networks (M) Sdn Bhd (formerly known as MIB Comm Sdn Bhd) and Asiaspace Dotcom will cover Peninsular Malaysia while Redtone-CNX Broadband will serve Sabah and Sarawak. According to the original plan, these companies are supposed to provide WiMax service by end of 2007.

However, it is a joke to realise at the later stage that there is no certified WiMax mobile equipment at 2.3GHz (probably refer to the reasonable cost equipment).
Now, instead of providing WiMax broadband wireless access service, these companies are now using WiMax as backbone instead. This has defeat the original purpose of MCMC to award WiMax licences at 2.3GHz, i.e., for mobile broadband wireless access.

In this WirelessKL project, P1 is in fact using WiMax as the backhaul solution.

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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.

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.