Tuesday May 10, 2011
By B.K. SIDHU
bksidhu@thestar.com.my
PETALING JAYA: Maxis Bhd is said to be in talks with Asiaspace Sdn Bhd to work out ways how both parties can collaborate and share infrastructure for the roll out of LTE (long term evolution) services.
Sources said the plans might involve Maxis building and operating the LTE network while Asiaspace will bring to the table the telecommunications spectrum so that the overall reach and capacity would be wider and bigger.
Maxis will use its network to offer LTE enabled services and Asiaspace would be able to offer services to its users by riding on Maxis LTE network, sources said.
Those familiar with the deal said that talks began several months ago and a preliminary agreement had been reached.
However, both parties would explore the feasibility of such a collaboration before an agreement was inked.
Sources said there might be a clause in the agreement that might give Maxis the first right of refusal to buy some stake in Asiaspace, provided the shareholders of the latter wanted to reduce their stake in the company.
Asiaspace sits on the 2.3G spectrum which is meant for the deployment of WiMax services but it can also be used for LTE deployment. Maxis also has several spectrum blocks that it uses for the range of its current services.
Both companies are also candidates that are supposed to be assigned the 2.6G spectrum meant for LTE and the assignment is scheduled on Jan 1, 2013. The Government had said nine companies would be allocated a 20MHz spectrum each on the 2.6G block.
The 20MHz block is seen to be too little for players to offer the next generation services which will be focused on heavy data and video.Collaboration and sharing of infrastructure is the “in thing'' in the telecoms industry as it helps the industry reduce duplication of infrastructure and at the same time maximise on bandwidth which has become a rare commodity.
Asiaspace began offering broadband services to users in select areas under the Amax brand sometime ago. However, since September last year it has suspended its services and blamed the rising cost of backhaul as one of the reasons that it had to suspend its services.
The company was said to have invested over RM40mil to deploy the network and it also needed funds to move head.
Its bandwidth was virtually un-used since the company suspended its broadband services and it needed to get back into the business as it risked losing the spectrum, sources added.
Currently Maxis also has a tie-up with Telekom Malaysia Bhd to ride on the latter's high speed broadband services in its bid to offer a full range of home services.
Apart from the Maxis/TM collaboration, TM is also separately working towards collaborating with Celcom Axiata Bhd for network sharing. Celcom also has a network sharing agreement with DiGi.Com Bhd.
Maxis has undertaken trails for LTE with Huawei in its bid to migrate to the fourth generation of wireless technology which promises to improve the throughput and capacity of wireless phone networks.
http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/5/10/business/8648240
No comments:
Post a Comment