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.

Founded in 2001, Singapore-based Utiba's vision is, “Empowering everyone to make mobile payments,” based on the belief that soon, mobile users can pay for goods and services using their mobile handset, to anyone, anywhere and any time only by knowing the recipient's mobile number.

In his book, Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Indian entrepreneur, consultant and management expert Coimbatore Krishnarao (CK) Prahalad and a Paul and Ruth McCracken distinguished university professor of Corporate Strategy at the Ross School of Business of the University of Michigan proposed that the engine for the ext round of global growth and prosperity would be the world's five billion people who live on less than US$2 per day, since the viability of this market had already been proposed by various private and state funder enterprises.

Not only has this “bottom-of-the-pyramid” (BoP) market delivered profitability for enterprises but their economic inclusion had resulted in spurts of growth at macro economic levels as well.

The inspiration behind Utiba's initiatives and solutions, is its capability to reach out to the BoP and provide them with the means of financial and economic inclusion, such as by enabling micro finance institutions to service small farmers and entrepreneurs in remote areas.

It's mobile payments technology has enabled foreign workers and emigrants to transfer funds to their family and friends, whenever they want to at a fraction of the cost of conventional systems.

Today, Utiba's clientèle comprises 26 mobile network operators, banks and government agencies across over 15 countries.

These include Maxis M-Money in Malaysia, Globe Telecom in the Philippines, Airtel, BSNL, Shyam & SmartTV in India, Hutch & UGen in Sri Lanka, Indosat& Axisworld in Indonesia, Mobifone & mService in Vietnam, Telcel in Mexico, Emtel in Mauritius, Citicell in Bangladesh, True in Thailand, Telma  in Madagascar and others.

By Orcun Tezel

Advanced network security solutions are now being deployed as much for sophisticated policy enforcement as external attack prevention.  This is, of course, a natural extension of what network security products have always been designed to do: ensuring that only legitimate network packets reach only appropriate destinations in the network. 
What constitutes legitimate network activity, however, is becoming increasingly complex, reflecting more sophisticated policies, business initiatives, and compliance requirements that are stretching the capabilities of today’s enterprise networks.  As a result, organizations are rethinking their network security requirements and looking to build policy awareness and enforcement into the fabric of the network.

Initially, network security policies were relatively simple to design.  The primary objective was to partition the “trusted” internal network and systems from the “untrusted” external world.  Securing the network perimeter could be implemented after the high-performance internal network had been laid down with a relatively small number of appliances and policy rules, depending on what internal services needed to be made available to external users (usually web access, email, and remote access for external employees).

Security policy frameworks are becoming more complex to deploy given the higher connectivity and sophistication of the network architecture and access needs due to:

1.Prevalence of insider threats from intellectual property theft to improper access of mission critical financial data.
2.Malware (viruses, worms and Trojan horses)  on the internal network, which have become more sophisticated.
3.Presence of more untrusted users and systems on the internal network, such as partners and contractors. 
4.Increase in compliance, regulatory and risk management initiatives, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA in health care or the payment card industry (PCI)

In response to these challenges and the internal nature of threats, organizations are moving from a secure perimeter to a Secure Network Fabric where networks are built to reflect the pervasive need for security and policy enforcement throughout the network. The key components are:

Automated Remediation – Blocking network threats in real-time by intelligently identifying illegitimate network packets or activity and dropping the offending traffic without manual intervention or creating an alert for every security incident as is the typical case today.

While the focus so far is on delivering 6 Mb/s connections to homes but providing a good user experience will require carrier Ethernet all the way into homes but Malaysia is not yet fibre rich right now, according to Andrew Coward, Juniper Networks vice-president of Service Provider Marketing & Partnerships.

Ethernet is a protocol which defines a packet structure which can be delivered over Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) or other such legacy networks but it's costly per bit, hence the need to move to a full IP-based network.

“After all, 80% of a carrier's spending is operational expenditure, so if this can be reduced to say 60%, there would be more to spend on development,” said Coward on the sidelines of the recent Carrier Ethernet World Asia Pacific Congress in Kuala Lumpur.

Carrier Ethernet can deliver all legacy services such as VPN, fixed broadband access, mobile voice and wireline voice, as well as new data services such as streaming video, digital TV, managed telepresence, online ads, mobile advertising, location-based services, mobile data services, wireless broadband services, CDN and cloud computing – to name a few – which to be delivered cost effectively must ride on a shared packet based IP network.

These new services are expected to experience 20% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) according to a December 2008 Yankee Group report, while the legacy services mentioned above have very low single digit CAGR at best, so the challenge is to transition the network and the business model to take advantage of  service opportunities and offset declining revenue and margins from more traditional services.

However, Ethernet was designed as a best-effort service within a local-area network (LAN) environment but such shared bandwidth generally results in a poor experiences, especially when viewing streaming videos, so the challenge is to take the cost advantage of Ethernet combined with proper controls to enable high quality service and a good user experience.

Broadband users are a demanding lot, with an attitude expressed in the chorus of the song by the rock band Queen, I want it all, which goes, “I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now.”

The anarchistic Internet culture which expects everything for free and takes advantage of unlimited access data packages to the hilt by doing peer-to-peer downloads all day and night long – caring only for their rights and not those of other users, when mobile broadband networks speeds are intended to enable fast transient traffic, such as web access and e-mail downloads.

With the Internet content and services such Voice-over-IP, search engines, video streaming portals and music downloads going mobile and a minority of users hogging available capacity, bandwidth traffic is increasingly exponentially, whilst revenue remains flat, according to a 2009 report by analyst firm Frost & Sullivan, and all this puts operators at risk of being forced to become a dumb pipe.

Moreover, voice revenue is flat or falling and additional data revenue cannot compensate for it, and all this makes it difficult for operators which differentiate themselves according to price.

This puts mobile broadband operators in difficult position as it costs operators money to provide sufficient bandwidth in their network to sustain the load and to maintain their networks, whilst providing quality service at an affordable price without losing money.

It's been found that 10% of users consume 90% of operators' resources, which puts them in the same position as a restaurant serving a buffet at a fixed price to customers at an ancient Roman banquet.

According to ancient Roman philosopher and statesman, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, these decadent and extravagant Roman banquets, including during the time of Julius Caesar, involved feasting on multiple courses of food and copious amounts of wine non-stop all day and night long, and to continue eating, the guests vomited up what they had eaten, sometimes on the floor for slaves to clean up and they continued eating more and repeated the process.

With such customers, the buffet restaurant would lose money and have to raise prices or go bankrupt, which is a similar dilemma faced by mobile broadband operators due to that 10% of users with insatiable appetites for content. So operators are forced to either raise the prices of their unlimited packages, throttle certain types of traffic or impose monthly fair use limits.

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) had been commissioned by the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (SKMM) to conduct a survey, The Adoption, Appropriation & Impact of Mobile Phones Among Malaysian Society, with funding by the SKMM Spectrum Research Collaboration Programme.

The term “adoption” refers to why a user adopts a technology and why they choose a specific make and model. “Appropriation” goes deeper to undersatnd how they adopted the technology and adapted it to satisfy their different purposes and how the use of the technology – in this case a mobile phone --  as intended by the designer, is actually used by end-users.

As for social impact, the survey looks into the both the positive and negative social impact of mobile phones, both intended and unintended.

The study is headed by Prof. Dr. Rose Alinda Alias, dean of UTM School of Graduate Studies, Skudai, Johor in partnership with Nor Zairah Addul Rahim, Assc. Prof. Dr. Naomie Salim, Assc. Prof. Dr. Azizah Abdul Rahman and Dr. Norafida Ithnin of UTM in collaboration with Assc. Prof Dr. Jennie Carroll of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Australia, Assc. Prof. Dr. Nor Shariza Abdul Karim, Dr. Norshidah Mohamed and Dr. Murni Mahmud of International Islamic University Malaysia (UIAM) and and Dr. Shamsul Anuar Mokhtar of Universiti Kuala Lumpur (UniKL).

We had attended the lectures by Dr. Rose Alinda and on The Impact of Wireless Technology (ie wireless broadband) on Malaysian Society by Associate Prof. Datin Dr. Norizan Abdul Razak of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi at the SKMM Spectrum Research Lecture Series at SKMM Auditorium in Cyberjaya on 21 August, with Associate Prof. Dr. Nik Rushdie Hassan of University of Minnesota as facilitator.

MSC Malaysia status radio frequency identification (RFID) solutions developer, MDT Innovations looks forward to become a multi-billion US dollar company if the deals it's working on go through.

Its core business is in the design, development, prototyping, manufacture, applications development, sales & marketing, maintenance and support services of RFID and high-technology information products, key components, critical parts and advanced display products.

Its major customers so far include Matsushita, NEC/MIT, Asahi, Totoku, Sotec, Trigen, Samsung, Proview/MAG, GVision, ComeMon/Cyco, KSI, ADI, Diva Labs, Miro, Konka, Likom, Telekom Malaysia, Radio Televisyen Malaysia, MINDEF (Ministry of Defense, Malaysia), Topre, Aspec and Powerview Technics.

“We expect our BHR300 Bluetooth HF Reader alone to bring us US$100 million worth of sales over the next two years, whilst we are currently working on an RF-SIM (radio frequency-SIM) for a multi-billion US dollar project in collaboration with one of the world's largest mobile phone companies,” its chairman and chief executive officer, Liew Choon Lian told Comm & Tech Asia at its office in Technology Park Malaysia on 18 September.

However, he could not disclose its identity, since negotiations are still underway.

The BHR300 is a battery powered, RFID reader module with USB 2.0 & 1.1 as well as Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity to a PC or smartphone.

It has a built-in antenna and works with industry-standard – i.e. ISO, IEC and Mifare RFID tags, and other compatible tags at 13.56MHz at short range of over 4cm for security, whilst its Bluetooth range is up to 100 metres, which enables it to be used in handheld or portable applications, such as ticketing, public events and so on.

“A well-know mobile phone company asked us to develop the BHR300 to authenticate its genuine products from the fakes in retail outlets in real time and this has a potential sale of 10 million units,” said Liew. “We're also talking with another popular smartphone maker which has asked us to develop a similar module like the BHR300 which will be embedded in its phones to enable them to be used in a range of RFID-based applications developed by third-parties.”

“Currently, only three companies in the world, including MDT make RFID readers with Bluetooth connectivity and we target the world's mobile phone market since it is huge,” Liew added.

By Ken Lee

As the worlds of Web, communications and entertainment converge from multiple dimensions, end-user and market demands are forcing transformations and changes in the definition of what a “service provider” is.

To better compete and monetise in this converging market dynamics, operators of mobile, fixed and broadband communication networks are upgrading and evolving their existing service delivery platform (SDP) infrastructures using open, IT industry standards-based technologies, such as Web Services, SOA, and Web 2.0.

Non-telco third party partners and developers are fast becoming the new battleground where telco and non-telco service providers are competing for mindshare and revenue-enhancing services.

An example of this struggle between telco and non-telco service providers for third party developers is Apple’s App Store and the thousands of iPhone developers, which provide over-the-top (OTT) applications to millions of iPhone users globally, where Apple is bypassing the mobile operator’s service delivery infrastructure to deliver applications directly to the end-user.  This business model puts the device manufacturer in the leading role in terms of defining the applications delivered to the handset.

To compete, some operators have focused on value added services, but with the key difference being that the applications and services offered are “exposure-enabled”.  These capabilities can include the ability for developers to embed SMS, location or presence capabilities into their applications, using those capabilities in the operator’s networks. This allows the third parties to seamlessly charge subscribers for downloading and using their applications without having to deploy a charging infrastructure of their own.

This becomes the key differentiating aspect of a carrier-centric app store versus the device-centric app store.  With carrier-centric app stores, they will contain applications that rely on having access to the carrier’s network for the application’s core features, such as offering presence information, or SMS capabilities with a picture attachment.

There are some key challenges many telco operators face with their existing SDP infrastructures that pose an obstacle to achieve the above said business model:

1. Current SDP is slow.  There are a lot of point-to-point, custom, and proprietary interfaces and integrations between the operator and third party partners. This requires a lot of manual third party integration into the operator’s SDP.
2. Current generation of SDP tends to be unattractive to third party developers.  The target developers are predominantly in the Web domain, and not in the telecom domain.
3. Current SDP infrastructure is risky and unreliable. The non-centralised nature of point-to-point integrations and point-to-point policy enforcement leads to unpredictability and unreliability in the SDP access, usage and control process.
4. Current SDP infrastructure makes it difficult for the operator to scale profitably. As operators implement third party exposure layers using a manual, custom integration process, it leads to higher costs.

MALAYSIA's broadband penetration stood at 22.9% of households as of the first quarter 2009 and grew to 24.8% in the second quarter, according to communications and content regulator, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC). However, this is still far short of Malaysia's goal of 50% broadband penetration by 2010.

Between those two quarters, the total number of broadband subscribers using all types of technologies grew from 1.89 million to 2.12 million but the vast majority – namely 1.378 million in the second quarter were fixed-line ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Loop) subscribers up 40,600 from the first quarter, whilst growth in other types of fixed or satellite broadband was almost insignificant, altogether growing by a mere 5,600 to 6,000 in the respective quarters.

However, the biggest growth came from mobile broadband which leapt by 156,400 from 474,900 in the first quarter to 631,700 in the second, whilst the number of users of other wireless broadband technologies, such as WiMAX and so on jumped from 61,200 in the first quarter to 86,900 in the second, whilst according to the Economic Planning Unit of the Prime minister's department, under the government's Broadband to the General Population (BBGP) initiative, there were a total of 1.4 million wireless broadband users as of the second quarter, 2009 of which 66% used 3G/HSDPA and 25% WiMAX.

According to the MCMC's Household Use of the Internet Survey 2008, there were a total of 1.9 million households with xDSL or dial-up Internet access as of the 31st of March, 2008 or an estimated total of  close to 4.3 million users nationwide based on 2.26 users per household, of which 73.9% used broadband, 25% dial-up and 1% both.

However an issue of great concern has been the huge difference – i.e. a consistent 6:1 ratio of the percentage share of urban-to-rural Internet users from 2005 to 2008, and stubbornly holds. The 88:12 urban-to-rural ratio in 2005 dropped to 82:18 ion 2006 but climbed back to 85.3:14.7 in 2008. and what's more is the high concentration of Internet users in certain parts of the country.,

The state of Selangor had 26.1% of all Internet users, followed by 13% in the federal territory of Kuala Lumpur, the capital, 11.6% in Johor state, 8.4% in Penang all the way down to 0.6% in Perlis state, and whilst the East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak were not too badly of with 5% and 6.3% respectively, all the other states in peninsular Malaysia had 4.4% penetration or less; all of which is a pretty grim picture.