ICT in brief

Information, Communications and Technology is a highly dynamic and innovative industry that drives economic and social progress in all the economies around the world. It is estimated by the year 2015 that over 5 billion people will be connected and much of that is because of what the ICT industry delivers. It can be demonstrated that there are multiplying effects of the implementation of many of the ICT solutions, services and know - how that benefits all of us and improve the GDP growth of many economies including Malaysia.
Since the early 90s Malaysia was one of the first developing countries to adopt information and communication technology to grow its economy. In 1996 Malaysia launched the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) project. The intention of the project is to create a world class ICT infrastructure and ideal environment for ICT related production. Two smart cities have been developed within this corridor, namely Putrajaya and Cyberjaya. It comprises a high-speed link network able to support about 10Gb/s connecting Malaysia to Japan, ASEAN, Europe and US.

The government wants to place Malaysia as a regional and global multimedia hub, For these reasons it has granted several incentives, mainly tax breaks, in order to attract multinational companies. The MSC aims also to improve the competitiveness of the existing companies operating in Malaysia. Currently, there are more than 1,900 ICT companies operating within the MSC Malaysia area, ranging from Internet-based business solutions and services providers to software application and services providers. Some of the sectors where Malaysian ICT companies can provide world-class applications include Financial Services Industry (FSI), Telecommunications (Telco) and e-Government services.

The telecommunication sector in Malaysia has grown significantly in the past decade. At the end of 2006 around 20 million mobile accounts were active, which is a penetration rate of just under 80% of the population. The fixed line penetrations have declined from 16.6% at the end of 2005 to 16.2% in the first three quarters of 2006.

In December 2006 all prepaid subscribers had to register their number at one of the main telecom providers. A regulation for the near future to open up the competition could be the introduction of number portability, which gives customers the opportunity to retain their number as they migrate to another provider.