Tuesday May 17, 2011
By LEE KIAN SEONG lks@thestar.com.my
PETALING JAYA: Green Packet Bhd and South Korea's SK Telecom are investing a further RM201.6mil in Packet One Networks (M) Sdn Bhd (P1) to support the network expansion of its 4G WiMAX/ TD-LTE (Time Division-Long Term Evolution) in the coming two years.
On completion of the additional investment, Green Pcket's share in P1 will be increased to 59.36% from 57.13% now while SK Telecom will hold a 25.97% share in P1, compared with the current 25.8%.
TD-LTE provides higher data rates and larger capacity and can reduce service delay.
Green Packet Bhd CEO Puan Chan Cheong (right) and P1 chief strategy officer and deputy CEO Dr Ahn Hoekyun in the interview with StarBiz.
It also offers improved real-time and highspeed services.
Green Packet group managing director and chief executive officer Puan Chan Cheong said the investment was made up of RM50.5mil from SK Telecom and up to RM151.1mil from Green Packet.
“We signed the investment agreement on Monday. We are making all the necessary preparations for the LTE deployment with the technology and financing in place.
“So far, P1 has already invested more than RM1bil for its capital expenditure (capex) and operating expenditure and our coverage is slightly more than 45% of population in peninsular Malaysia now,” he told StarBiz in an interview yesterday.
He said P1 also had vendor financing of about US$150mil from ZTE Corp and international telecom equipment vendors had approached the company to support its dual WiMAX/LTE network expansion.
“We will be completing our LTE trial before year-end. We will roll out the services once we have obtained the green light from the regulator.
“SK Telecom is rolling out a huge LTE network in South Korea and we will leverage on their expertise and services for our LTE roll out,” he said.
P1 chief strategy officer and deputy chief executive officer Dr Ahn Hoekyun, the representative from SK Telecom in P1, said SK Telecom would launch its commercial LTE network in July with a capex investment of more than US$2bil.
SK Telecom is South Korea's leading telecommunications provider with more than 25 million subscribers, which accounts for more than 50% of the total market.
On whether SK Telecom will increase its stake in P1, Ahn said: “We are very interested to increase our shares in P1 going forward.
"We see the potential in P1 and we think our presence in Malaysia with P1 will be very crucial to expand our business in South-East Asia.”
Puan said Green Packet had no specific timeline or proposal for the further acquisition of shares by SK Telecom in P1 but it would be a long term vision for both parties in order to grow the company.
In June 2010, SK Telecom invested US$100mil in P1, making it the second largest shareholder in P1 after Green Packet.
Puan said that P1 was on track to reach 65% population coverage by the end of next year, adding that it had about 1,100 base stations now and planning to build up to 1700 stations to cover about 55% of the population by year-end.
P1 chief executive officer Michael Lai said the company had already begun trials with its technology partner, ZTE, to co-exist with both TD-LTE and WiMAX, leveraging on the power of the two 4G technologies.
“We demonstrated the capability of our technology to key media, and they witnessed download speeds of 130Mbps at 2.3GHz.
“We are ready to put on trial the 2.6GHz spectrum. The timing is subject to the allocation of the spectrum,” he said.
With this investment, P1 will be in position to respond to the trend in data consumption by ramping up its mobile broadband coverage via its dual 4G WiMAX/TD-LTE network expansion.
The expansion from WiMAX to a TD-LTE network requires only a software upgrade as both the WiMAX and TD-LTE standards can be supported on the same platform and can operate on the same 2.3GHz spectrum.
http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/5/17/business/20110517074600&sec=business
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