Malaysia in unchecked plunge in IT international competitiveness
By Lim Kit Siang
Malaysia in unchecked plunge in IT international competitiveness as illustrated by another adverse global study – the 2009 Oxford/Cisco Global Broadband Quality Score
Thirteen years ago Malaysia proclaimed the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) as “a gift to the world” and the centrepiece of the country’s strategic initiative to leapfrog the nation into the IT era to become one of the world IT powers.
Since then, MSC and Malaysia have faded away from the world radar screen as an international IT hotspot – and Malaysia’s unchecked plunge in IT international competitiveness in the past decade has been confirmed by another adverse global study, the 2009 Oxford/Cisco Global Broadband Quality Score.
This study of the global state of broadband quality put Malaysia 53rd out of 66 countries in terms of the quality and reach of its networks – understandably behind countries like Korea, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, United States but also trailing countries we should be leading like Turkey, Chile, China, Qatar, Brazil, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Cyprus, Costa Rica, Bahrain, Thailand, Tunisia, Mexico, Philippines and UAE.
Malaysia could not make it into the three top broadband categories of “Ready for tomorrow” (nine countries led by South Korea and Japan), “Comfortably enjoying today’s applications” (16 nations), “Meeting needs of today’s applications” (14 nations), but falls into the last category of “Below today’s applications threshold” (27 nations) and occupying the 17th position.
South Korea and Japan continue to dominate the league table in this second global study, largely due to their commitment to fast networks.
In South Korea, for instance, the government has promised universal speeds of up to 1Gbps by 2012.
Internationally, broadband quality has moved from one of penetration, i.e. who had broadband connection and who did not, to include broadband speed but Malaysia is till bogged down in the initial stage.
