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.

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.

KUALA LUMPUR, 10 December, 2009: Following its mobile payments application on Apple iPhones, PayPal just launched applications for BlackBerry and Android phones and is currently developing an application for Symbian phones.

The iPhone app which can be download for free from the Apple App Store lets users make payments, check their account balance and review past transactions on the iPhone. The Android and BlackBerry applications can be downloaded from their respective app stores, Mario Shiliashki, PayPal managing director and general manager for Southeast Asia & India told reporters at the Dubrovnik Croatian restaurant in Kuala Lumpur today.

At the same time, PayPal, the San Jose, California-based provider of Internet payment services launched two new services for Malaysia – namely, support for payments in Malaysian Ringgit and a new feature for merchants to withdraw money from their PayPal accounts and deposit it in local banks. As PayPal is connected to Malaysia's Central Clearance System, it is accessible my most banks also connected to the system.

“Our purpose is to enable small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) to easily conduct electronic-commerce transactions worldwide and the key significance of these new services is that it enables business to be conducted within Malaysia using PayPal, whereas previously buyers in Malaysia could buy from merchants overseas and buyers overseas could buy from merchants in Malaysia, and it also gives Malaysian merchants access to our 80 million active accounts worldwide,” said Shiiliashki.

Kuala Lumpur, Dec 4: InterCall, the world largest conferencing and collaboration services provider launched a slew of new services under the InterCall brand in Malaysia at the Aquaria KLCC aquarium today.

Its operations in Malaysia had hitherto been centred around Genesys Conferencing's conference call services. Headquartered in France, Genesys has been in operational in Malaysia since 2002.

InterCall completed its acquisition of the Genesys group in May 2008 and this announcement marks InterCall's formal entry into Malaysia and the furtherance of the consolidation the merger of Genesys. However, it will retain the Genesys brand name in Malaysia, since it's well established amongst customers here.

“We wil deliver and expanded suite of products, better access to Asian resources (ie. human resources) for account management and customer support, leading edge technology and global reach,” said Hain MacKay-Cruise, InterCall managing director – Asia Pacific.

These new services include Reservationless-Plus, Automated Operator Assisted, Intercall Unified Meeting, InterCall Call Streaming Services, InterCall Video Conferencing, InterCall Online and InterCall Web Services.

By Khaw Chia Hui

It is long known that the smartphone segment is growing exponentially and will continue to do so in the coming years. According to Gartner (Dec 2008) smartphone shipments will exceed 600 million by 2012 and 76 million are made up of Android phones.

Smartphones in the coming years are becoming smarter and the explosion of apps is believed to introduce new security challenges for telcos. To address some of these challenges, Symantec shared with Mobile World about its Project BBQ.

Project BBQ or also known as Symantec Mobile Reputation Security is to protect wireless networks against unknown malware and blacklisted applications. Similar to what they used in their consumer anti virus, Norton 2010, it assigns reputation scores to each app by taking a “fingerprint” of that app and run it through their algorithms and reputation servers.

It will then generate a whitelist and allow the telcos to confine its customers within a certain reputation score. The telco can decide to stop, uninstall or block blacklisted apps that has already been installed.

According to Mark Bregman, Symantec’s CTO, the adoption of open operating systems such as Android creates doors for malware and badly written apps that might cripple wireless networks. To illustrate his point, he gave an example whereby a badly written app for Android smartphones was able to shut down a cell tower each time it was launched, causing the telco financial damage.

He also iterates that Symantec’s reputation servers can’t read exactly what’s inside any file. It only takes a file hash and run it through its servers to deliver a score and it’s up to the telcos take set up their own policies regarding low reputation apps.

Currently, the technology is in pilot programmes with several carriers.