By Lian Cheng
KUCHING, Jan 13: The Sarawak government is looking for two internet gateways to link Sarawak internationally.
At the same time, Sarawak is also building more telecommunication towers so that once the two prerequisites are ready, Sarawak may enjoy high speed internet connection.
“As you know we are building our telco towers, and we are at the moment exploring to add our gateway, Sarawak’s gateway to international linkages. We are working with Brunei Darussalam, because they have got their gateway that goes direct to Hong Kong with the international cable.
“At least we must have two gateways, and that will allow communications with certain speeds between us and the world. As you know, internally we are upgrading our speed and our target by the year 2025 (where) our connectivity is based on 5G.
“With that, we are working with Huawei and with Centexs (Centre of Technical Excellence); we are working together with Beyond Reality, an international company that is expert in virtual reality and augmented reality,” said Abang Johari at a meet-the-media session on Jan 6 at his office, held in conjunction with his third anniversary as chief minister.
He explained that that has been the way forward for Sarawak’s digitalisation programme to turn Sarawak into a digital economy.
“Having said that, we have to upgrade also our ecosystem with digital economy. As you know what I did in the first year was organise digital seminars, the first International Digital Economy Conference Sarawak (IDECS), where we invited experts in digital economy, including the question of blockchain, and also the modern technologies that are available for us to transform our economy.”
Strong conviction that technology was the key and the driver of development, Abang Johari set up Sarawak Multimedia Authority (SMA).
“And this authority is a regulatory authority that will engage with the public as well as private sector, and also as a vehicle to upgrade our digital infrastructure,” said Abang Johari. —DayakDaily
