Niraj K. Gupta
Seven operators in 1985, five now,
and three in the 3G era—Malaysia is heading towards that.
Whenever I traveled to Malaysia, I found it so
similar to India. In places like Malacca, one feels almost at home. Because of
market similarities, the Malaysian cellular story has always been interesting.
Too much competition has been hurting even the strongest players. The five
full-service players—each having cellular, international gateway and domestic
fixed-line licenses—are still vying for a share of the Malaysia’s market,
making consolidation inevitable.
Malaysia started analog mobile services in 1985
and at one point of time had seven mobile operators. The first merger of a GSM
operator with Telekom Malaysia (TMB) took place quite early, leaving six in the
fray. Now there are five operators. By the end of the previous year, mobile
penetration in Malaysia—with a population of close to 24 million—was around 25
percent and should be around 28 percent now.
The biggest operator Maxis, formerly known as Binariang,
with about 29 percent of the market share, had BT as a shareholder till BT
decided to quit its Asian investments. The second major player TRI-Celcom,
controlled by Tajudin Ramli and Deutsche Telekom, had a market share of 27
percent. In a recent development, TRI-Celcom has agreed to merge its mobile
phone business with that of TMB, the terms of which are being worked out. The
third cellular operator DiGi, with around 1.1 million subscribers, is
Malaysia’s leading GSM 1800 mobile network service operator and claims to be
the market leader in pre-paid services. DiGi tries to tailor its services to
suit customers’ lifestyles, work and play. Norwegian partner Telenor has
offered to increase its stake in DiGi from 32 percent to 61 percent. The local incumbent
Telekom Malaysia is the fourth player, with a market share of 16 percent.
It is interesting to note that the five mobile
operators signed an MoU in November 2001 on the sharing of the telecom
infrastructure to optimize and consolidate their respective resources.
|
|