Studio Press

All 3G operators in Malaysia will have to enter into interoperability agreements to secure a wider subscriber base, Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific ICT Practice Telecoms Research head Teyew Sin Siew said.

Teyew said Malaysia’s current 3G operators Maxis Communications Bhd and Celcom (Malaysia) Bhd used only the WCDMA (wideband code division multiple access) technology; thus there should not be any technical interoperability problem.

He said 3G operators here had realised the importance of interoperability from the experience gained from SMS.

“All operators (Maxis, Celcom, MiTV Corporation Sdn Bhd and Time dotCom Bhd) will need to interoperate as the subscribers are not in isolation.

“Each network should be able to talk to each other (in terms of 3G); it is more of commercial (issues) rather than technical,” he said in a recent email reply to FinancialDaily .

He said Maxis-Celcom’s video calling interoperability was a good example that the country was moving in the right direction towards full interoperability.

“However, I do not see roaming between each other happening in the medium term; in fact, I haven’t seen any country doing that yet,” he said.

Teyew added that broadband phones (the 015 number) was one area that had not seen interoperability, whereby broadband phone subscribers could only call each other from the same network.

“We believe that the regulator is in the midst of settling this issue,” he said.

Citing a research by Frost & Sullivan, he said the emerging partnership interoperability in 3G sector would help spur the adoption of 3G services in the Asia Pacific region.

He said the research expected 3G subscribers to reach about 120,000 by year-end, led by the established Japan and South Korea markets, riding on more affordable handset, lowering price for bundled offers, increasing interoperability and thus wider coverage, and more media partnerships in securing contents for 3G.

He said on the Asia Pacific front, China, India and the Philippines would soon join the 3G list of licensees, with a mass roll-out expected only beyond 2007.

Countries in the Asia Pacific region which have issued 3G licenses to various operators are Japan, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

He said Thailand had held back its 3G licensing and it remained a question mark whether the country would join the 3G parade in the near future.-theedgedaily