KUCHING, April 19: Sarawak Multimedia Authority (SMA) hopes that major telecommunications providers in the country will invest more in Sarawak to provide better coverage and services to the people, as well as to provide a five-year master plan to assist in strategic planning.
According to a press release issued today by SMA, its general manager Dr Zaidi Razak, has asked telecommunications providers such as Maxis to provide SMA with its five-year master plan to assist in strategic planning.
He said this to the Maxis delegation led by Chief Network Officer Abdul Karim Fakir Ali at the SMA office here recently.
Zaidi went on to say that the master plan is crucial for the relevant authorities, including SMA, to decide on where to build the towers.
“What we want to do with the master plan is enable us to ‘lock’ the sites which will take into account the future development of the State.
“For instance, we also have a master plan in Kuching, which includes zoning such as commercial and marketplace zoning, as well as residential zoning.
“That’s why we need a master plan not only from Maxis but also from other telecommunications providers such as Celcom, Digi, and U Mobile, where they want to put up the towers,” he explained.
He reiterated that this way they can put up the request to the State Planning Authority (SPA) for approval, which is why they require a master plan.
Meanwhile, Zaidi also disclosed that SMA is working closely with the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to provide better communication services in Sarawak.
On a related issue, he highlighted the fact that communications towers in remote areas of Sarawak are susceptible to power outages, which will affect the communication network.
“We know the challenges we have in Sarawak; for example, if the network is suddenly down in Kapit for two to three hours, nobody will know unless we have a remote sensing trigger device.
“We will only know if the site is down a day later when people relay the message to us and that’s one of the challenges that we are facing.
“So, I hope the network providers will look into this matter,” he said.
In this regard, Zaidi commended Maxis’ efforts for putting up their sensor devices to monitor its network in Sarawak. — DayakDaily
