Telekom Malaysia ups the ante

Telekom Malaysia is targeting an Unifi customer base of more than 650,000 customers by as early as 2014

Read more: Telekom Malaysia ups the ante http://www.btimes.com.my/articles/tmzam01/Article/#ixzz1ZieVs8XE

Kuala Lumpur: Telekom Malaysia Bhd, the country's largest fixed-line operator, aims to expand its Unifi customer base to more than 650,000 customers by as early as 2014, a more than fourfold rise. Currently, TM has more than 160,000 Unifi customers via one million premises passed (number of premises that have HSBB coverage), which represents a penetration rate of 16 per cent. "By end of this year, we should be comfortably achieving the 200,000 mark. This would be a fantastic milestone. The earlier we get the customers on board, the earlier we can cover our upfront costs. "What I would see as a successful achievement over the medium term is to hit 50 per cent penetration in three to five years. That would be our next major milestone," said TM group chief executive officer Datuk Seri Zamzamzairani Isa in an interview with Business Times. For Zamzamzairani, having a high speed broadband customer base penetration of 16 per cent within a short period is a tremendous success. "The strong take-up was above my expectations. If you look at the markets in Europe, they were achieving 4 per cent penetration in the first two years. Here, we are hitting 15-16 per cent now and we are not even two years old yet," he added. Although the take-up rate was above the company's expectation, the company said it is still too early to say if it will recover its investments faster than market expectations. "High speed broadband (HSBB) is a long-term project. It is a programme that will take 10 years to complete. So, it's still too early to say if we will be breaking even our investments earlier than expected," he said. The company's second quarter net profit improved 2.3 per cent to RM127.2 million, while revenue rose 3.8 per cent to RM2.23 billion. "Today, 60 per cent of our revenue are from non-voice services. The significance of this is that the growth area is in the non-voice business. So, having the bulk of the revenue from the growth area part of the business helps a lot," he said. Another good news from its recent quarterly numbers also showed that about 35 per cent of its Unifi customer base are new customers (customers who were previously not with TM via its fixed-line voice or Streamyx services). "This is very encouraging, because they were never our customers before, and now, because of Unifi, they have become our customers, so it's not just all migration," he added. At present, TM's HSBB services cover over one million premises passed. It is expected to cover 1.1 million premises passed by end of this year and 1.3 million by end of next year. These targets are part of the conditions set under the public-private-partnership agreement. "Our expansion of HSBB coverage doesn't just stop post-2012.We will continue, except then it will be more demand-driven, and we will be looking at areas where there're demand and good business case," he said.