BUKIT JALIL, 23 Feb: Some local authorities are a hindrance to broadband rollout, Minister of Information, Communications and Culture. Dato' Seri Utama Dr. Rais Yatim told the media, whilst officiating at the amax City launch at Technology Park Malaysia here today.

“The procedures involved in operators installing a base station include rental of the land, submitting their plans for approval, meeting additional conditions and receiving the permit and whilst this normally takes between four to six months, a local authority has been known to have dragged this process out for four years, and investigations have found instance of hanky panky in some cases,” said Dr. Rais.

“Most local authorities create issues in urban areas,” he added.

On the relatively high broadband costs in Malaysia compared to neighbouring countries, Dr. Rais said that the the regulator, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (SKMM) could look into equipment and other broadband costs, while based on information from the advanced countries, the more players there are, the better is the broadband quality.

“The cost of broadband must vary from community to community, with lower rates in rural areas, and higher rates elsewhere, Said Dr. Rais.

Speaking as one of the players, Asiaspace chairman Datuk Ghani Abdullah said that his company pays Telekom Malaysia RM200,000 for a backhaul link from its base stations within the Klang Valley plus RM50,000 per month for access to the international gateway. Asiaspace owns and operates the amax WiMAX wireless broadband service and currently has 60 base stations within the Klang Valley and 70 towers in the rest of the country.

BUKIT JALIL, 23 Feb: Malaysia's first amax City was launched in Technology Park Malaysia today, providing the around 5,000 occupants within 700 hectares of the park with unlimited access to online services and facilities via wireless broadband.

This project came about following complaints of slow broadband connectivity by many of the park's tenants, most of whom are high-technology startups.

It's implemented by Asiaspace WiMAX Sdn Bhd, employing the WiWi (WiMAX-WiFi)  hybrid customer premises equipment (CPE) developed by MIMOS Bhd and commercialised by Pernec Integrated Network Systems.

The WiWi CPE connects to the base station via WiMAX wireless broadband and provides WiFi coverage of the local area, thus enabling users with already abundant WiFi-enabled equipment such as notebook PCs, netbook PCs, WiFi-PCI cards, WiFi-USB dongles, PDAs, smartphones, printers and so on with Internet access.

There are three amax WiMAX base station in the area – namely one in Technology Park, one in Pintasan Puchong and one in Sri Petaling, each with a range of 1.5km radius. Backhaul connectivity from the base stations to the network core is provided by Telekom Malaysia.

The National Advanced IPv6 Centre (NAv6) is participatiing in  the Asia Pacific regional Conference on Operational Technologies (APRICOT) 2010, now taking place at the KL Convention Centre from 23 February to 5 March.

NAv6 director, Prof. Dr. Sureswaran Ramdass will be speaking on IPv6 at APRICOT at 2.00pm on 3rd March.

Formerly known as the Network Research Group at the School of Computer Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, NAv6 is now in the forefront of the government's push for IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) adoption and implementation in Malaysia and to be the national centre for research into the next-generation Internet.

It's already well known that the current 32-bits IPv4 Internet addresses are running out, so the 128-bits IPv6 addressing scheme will, in theory, enable each person and almost every thing on Earth to have an IP address.

Meanwhile, NAv6 has developed an embedded software based, high-definition (HD) video conferencing solution - the world's first to be IPv6-based.

“Our software based engine is currently in prototype stage now and when market ready in November, will enable OEM equipment manufacturers and developers who want to develop it further to produce affordable, high-definition video conferencing systems,” said Sureswaran.

“Our solution is designed to fill the void between software-based video conferencing services such as Skype, Yahoo! Messenger and others with their free one-to-one communications and high-end, hardware-based, point-to multi-point video conferencing systems such as those by Tandberg, Polycom and others,” he added.

It's designed to be available in three ranges – ie. a low-definition system with text and simple presentations, a medium-definition system with a mixture of text and video and a high-definition system with HD-video, graphics and text.

NAv6 will localise its HD- video conferencing system for several installations across Asia. Its system costs up to about half that of the hardware-based systems and requires the addition of a HD-cameras and echo-cancellation microphones.

It works with regular 1 to 2 Mb/s ADSL connections, a projector, multiple display screens with a whiteboard, with optional addition of file-sharing, real-time editing and collaboration software or solutions.

KUALA LUMPUR, 22 Feb, 2009: In preparation for the nationwide launch of its WiMAX service as planned in July, YTL Communications made a commitment to purchase one million units of WiMAX single chip integrated circuits (ICs) from US-based GCT Semiconductor, a leading fabless semiconductor developer, designer and supplier of single-chip ICs, including for Mobile WiMAX.

YTL Communications will consign these chips so acquired, including GCT’s GDM7205 WiMAX single chips and GDM7215 WiMAX/WiFi dual-mode single chips, to key original design manufacturers which will use them in innovative WiMAX equipment and devices for use with YTL Communication's WiMAX service.

These chips combine the radio module and the digital signal processor (DSP) on a single piece of silicon which enables high-speed modularity. They are used in devices such as WiMAX-USB dongles, customer premises equipment (CPEs) such as desktop WiMAX modems, portable routers, VoIP phones, mobile Internet devices, netbooks, femtocells and so on.

Dr. Kyeongho “KH” Lee, President and CEO of GCT Semiconductor claimed that YTL Communication's purchase will CGT to retail 60 percent market share this year, with design wins from over 40 countries, including Malaysia, Korea, Japan, Russia and USA.

While YTL Communications will be the last of Malaysia's four 2.3GHz WiMAX licensees to roll out WiMAX service in Malaysia, its chief executive officer Lee K. Wing had earlier explained in conjunction with the MSC Malaysia International Advisory Panel Meeting and Implementation Council Meeting on 10 November, 2009, that the company planned to launch service with a big bang, with immediate coverage of over 60% of the population, complete with third party content, applications and services to go with it, so as to make it worthwhile for the public to adopt broadband.

“Unlike other WiMAX operators, when we launch, we want subscribers to have coverage everywhere at the flip of a switch and not just in patches,” said Lee.

Malaysians need to move up the value chain, we've often been told by our country's leaders and policy makers over the last 10 or so years.

As lower skilled assembly and manufacturing jobs, which have provided over 30 years of employment opportunities are moved away to lower wage countries due to globalisation and open borders, it's no longer enough for Malaysian workers, technicians and engineers to simply engage in the production of finished products but need to be able to design them and develop the underlying operating system which drives them.

So instead of just assembling and marketing products such a DVD, digital music, digital video players, mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and the many more devices, appliances and equipment, we now have to know how to develop the embedded operating systems and applications which drive them and give them their seeming intelligence, and there's been an increasing interest from  working engineers and technicians to upgrade their skills and local colleges and universities to incorporate embedded systems development in their curricula.

For example, eACT Technologies has been providing short courses in embedded software development in Malaysia since 2004 and and has trained over 250 engineers in industry to upgrade their skills and obtain certification, according to its technical director Suresh Santhana Krishnan.

“There's lots of interest today, from local universities and colleges to implement embedded development labs, such as Intel Lab and Arm Lab on campus and we are in discussions with local institutions to conduct diploma courses in embedded development,” he said.

As for a career, there are many opportunities for outsourced development work from overseas.

Hands-on workshops

eACT itself conducts four and five day hands-on training workshops on Embedded Linux & Device Driver development and  Windows CE Product Development Using PDA Platform respectively, with the Linux and Windows CE 6.0 workshops alternating each month between Kuala Lumpur and Penang, subject to a minimum attendance of five at each city.

Windows CE is used in consumer devices such as GPS navigators and a few smartphones, and while it's more popular on industrial or professional devices which don't need the lifestyle features found on consumer smartphones, upon which Windows Mobile derived from Windows CE is more common but competence in Windows CE development provides the foundation for Windows Mobile development.

At the same time, there are very few straight embedded Linux phones, upon which Linux-based OS such as Android are gaining prominence, so why does eACT not conduct workshops on Android instead?

"Gaining competence in embedded Linux development provides the basis for people to develop on Android," said Suresh. "Moreover, there's not much information yet available at the kernel level development on Android. Currently their architecture SDK available on http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html.  Their architecture is not open yet, so they entertain users to develop applications on their SDK, while Linux lets developers go right down to the underlying core. We however are planning Android courses in the near future,” he added.

Also, while Windows CE is a proprietary OS, Microsoft lets beginners download a 90-days free evaluation of Windows CE 6.0 and its application programming interface (API) is made available to developers who register with the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN).

FriendlyARM

Students are provided with a FriendlyARM Mini 2440 “target board” - ie. a single-board computer with a touchscreen, interface cables and software which they can purchase and take home after the workshop and continue with their experimentation and development.

Measuring 100 x 100 mm, the FriendlyARM Mini 2440 is powered by a low-cost, 400 MHz Samsung S3C2440A ARM9 processor, comes with Flash memory with BIOS, electrically erasable programmable read only memory (EEPROM), external SD card slot, three RS-232 serial ports, USB ports, 3.5mm stereo audio output jack, audio input & condenser microphone, 10/100 Mb/s RJ-45 Ethernet port, real time clock with battery, buzzer, 20-pin camera interface, LCD interface, touchscreen, power supply and it's compatible with Android, Linux 2.6 and Windows CE5 and 6 OS.

The Linux workshop teaches students about the kernel, booting and kernel initialisation, basic Linux common set, system calls, embedded OS, the GNU toolchain, how to build a kernel, experimenting with the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, setting up the host and target boards, introduction to the ARM architecture, loading the boot loader, configuring the board, installing the application, debugging it using the board, compiling and configuring the kernel, Linux device driver using X86, introduction to Linux device drivers, debugging techniques and lab sessions.

The Windows CE workshop involves an introduction to the platform builder IDE, customising the OS design, configuring Windows Embedded CE sub-projects, managing catalogue items, building and deploying a runtime image, editing build configuration files, analysing build results, deploying a run-time image on the target platform, a lab session on building and runing a run-time image on the emulator, generating a software development kit (SDK), customising a board support package, configuring memory mapping of a BSP, developing device drivers, implementing a stream interface driver, configuring and loading a driver, implementing an interrupt mechanism in a device driver, an exercise in driver code examples, debugging and testing the system, configuring the run-time image to enable debugging and testing the system using the CE test kit.

Prerequisites for the workshops are a knowledge of C or C++ programming languages and a knowledge of Windows CE or Linux, while an engineering or information and communication technology background is preferred but not necessary, so basically any technically competent person in these fields, with or without a formal qualification can participate.

Fees are RM6,000 for each of the courses, plus RM400 if the students wants to take the FriendlyARM kit home. Discounts are available to educational institutions, as well as individuals and companies can claim the cost of these courses from the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF).

THE acceleration of content development and how it can complement the growth of broadband penetration in Malaysia was the topic of the P1 Expert Net panel discussion at Packet One Network's (P1's) auditorium in Petaling Jaya on 28 January, 2010.

The panellists comprised Pete Teo, a musician, actor and producer of the P1 sponsored  Malaysian Filmmaker Showcase – the 15 Malaysia project http://15malaysia.com; Hasnul Hadi Samsudin. head of the MSC Malaysia Animation and Creative Content Centre (MAC3), James Chong, chief executive of ruumzNation which operates and manages ruumz, Malaysia's first fully-fledged social networking site at www.ruumz.com; Kanchei (Ken) Loa, a research fellow with the Institute of Information Industry, Taiwan; and moderated by Michael Lai, P1 chief executive officer.

Absent was Harold Thwaites, associate professor and dean of the Faculty of Creative Multimedia, Multimedia University.

“Malaysia's household broadband penetration now stands at 32% and one of the ways to further encourage broadband adoption is to have relevant and exciting content catered to specific interests of different people. Therefore it's important to create more local content that complements the varied lifestyle of Malaysians to bridge the relevance gap and the momentum will help Malaysia realise its goal of 50% household penetration by the end of this year,” said Michael Lai.

Kuala Lumpur, 2 February: Time dotCom, an optical fibre broadband service provider, launched Time Fibre Broadband in Mont Kiara, an exclusive, upmarket residential area of Kuala Lumpur  today.

The three packages are 2Mb/s, 5Mb/s and 10Mb/s unlimited access at RM149, RM199 and RM329 per month respectively. Each of these packages also includes up to 10 hours of free “Boost” speed of 10Mb/s per month, 50Mb/s free for up to 15 hours per month and 50Mb/s free for up to 30 hours per month respectively.

Users can turn on Boost speed as and when required, such as when downloading or streaming a large video file and  revert to their normal speed for regular Internet access. Additional Boost time at 50Mb/s costs RM10 for 2 hours, RM18 for 4 hours and RM35 for 8 hours.

The first phase of the rollout is currently available at seven exclusive, up-market condominia – namely, Mont Kiara Pines, Mont Kiara Palma, Mont Kiara Pelangi, Mont Kiara Sophia, Mont Kiara Astana, Mont Kiara Bayu and Mont Kiara Damai.

“We will extent coverage to other residences in Mont Kiara by the end of this first quarter and to the rest of the Klang Valley thereafter,” said Time dotCom chief executive officer, Afzal Abdul Rahim.

KUALA LUMPUR, January 19: The Malaysia-based Hong Leong Financial Group has installed a complete data centre and office network infrastructure from Juniper Networks in its headquarters and data centre.

Following a series of mergers and acquisitions over the last decade the Hong Leong Financial Group, which comprises a conventional bank, Islamic bank, investment bank and an insurance company, has consolidated its IT operation into a purpose-built twin-tower office development, which includes the new data center, while its senior management took advantage of the opportunity to refresh significant elements of its IT infrastructure.

The Juniper Networks EX Series Ethernet Switches and the range of Juniper security devices installed in Hong Leong's purpose-built premise provides the group with high-capacity, low-latency network performance along with low operational costs thanks to the Junos operating system running across its switch infrastructure.

“Rather than move our legacy network switching equipment to the new site we wanted to employ the latest technology to improve performance, simplify both our network architecture and operations and position the network for growth,” said Hong Kean Yong, Group Chief Information Officer of Hong Leong Financial Group Berhad.

“The Juniper Networks solution enabled us to cut the network down to two layers, which has obvious CapEx benefits and is much easier to manage.” he said. “ Having a single network operating system running across our switching infrastructure also makes a big difference in our operational costs.”

By collapsing the multiple switching layers present in traditional network architectures, the Juniper Networks EX Series Ethernet Switches dramatically simplify network designs by requiring fewer devices and interconnections, leading to improved efficiencies in space, power, cooling and management.

A public room is due to be operational in a major hotel in Kuala Lumpur this first quarter, Christopher Steffens, Tata Communications director for Telepresence Public Room Services told the media in Singapore last November.

Not to be confused with a public toilet, “public room” is its industry's term for a public telepresence centre which can be booked for use by the public.

On June 30, 2009, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Tata Communications had announced a partnership to roll out public telepresence rooms worldwide, with 10 new facilities opening in Starwood hotels by the end of 2009.

The first telepresence suites were planned for Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers, Sheraton on the Park in Sydney, Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, The Westin Los Angeles Airport and W Chicago-City Centre, with the intention to expand the offering to hotels in key international business locations like Brussels, Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo, to provide Starwood and its guests with an “in person” meeting experience with participants in rooms around the world.