TIME dotCom (TdC) has reportedly begun discussions with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) on implementing the country’s national broadband agenda, which among other things calls for an improvement in service quality at more affordable prices. Malaysian Reserve cites TdC chief executive Afzal Abdul Rahim as saying that his company fully supports the state’s recent announcement of its intention to double broadband speeds in the country at half the price, confirming: ‘We’ve already started engaging the regulator actively in this regard and we’re ready to go – we just hope the rest of the competition is’. The impact of the government’s agenda on the company’s margins is expected to be ‘rather limited’, Afzal added, as he claimed the operator’s price point for services is already low.
With regards to the company’s current activity, Afzal confirmed that TdC’s target market remains multi-dwelling units and condominiums. ‘That’s our target market for now because we don’t have the means to reach the rest. It’s not that we don’t want to go to landed properties – it’s that we’re unable to, because we don’t have access to poles and we’re unable to plant new poles,’ he said, However, the operator is said to be willing to invest its own funds to boost coverage, although it has argued it first needs to ‘be given the chance to do so, and that’s up to the government to decide’.
Meanwhile, in publishing its financial results for the first three months of 2018 TdC reported an 18.6% year-on-year increase in net profits to MYR62.94 million (USD15.83 million), up from MYR53.05 million a year earlier; this was attributed to several factors, including higher overall revenues on the back of improved overall cost efficiencies and a higher share of profit from investment in associates, which helped offset higher depreciation, and a higher interest expense, among other things. Revenue for the quarter ended 31 March 2018 totalled MYR230.73 million, up from MYR218.42 million in the corresponding period of 2017, with turnover from the company’s data and data centre business rising by 8% and 10% y-o-y, respectively. Fixed voice revenue, however, declined 22% against 1Q17, due to ’lower usage’ in the latest reporting period.