Saturday August 21, 2010
By B.K. SIDHU
bksidhu@thestar.com.my
KUALA LUMPUR: Businessman Tan Sri Syed Yusof Syed Nasir has bought a 30% stake in Vasseti Bhd, which is expected to launch its 1Gbps (gigabit per second) fixed line broadband service offering for residential users in select areas today.
“Telecommunications is a growing business. It has a lot of potential and I believe it is not too late for me to be part of a growing segment of the market,” Yusof told StarBizWeek in an interview yesterday.
Yusof has various business concerns and is well known for his interests in Hard Rock Cafe and Hotels and the Concorde Hotel chain. He is a partner alongside the Sultan of Selangor and Ipoh-born tycoon Ong Beng Seng in the RM2.5bil Four Seasons Place Kuala Lumpur which is being developed next to the Petronas Twin Towers.
Syed Yusof at Vasseti’s network operations centre in Kuala Lumpur.“I came on board early this year,” said Yusof, who is Vasseti chairman.
Vasseti’s journey into telecoms began early this year when it undertook a corporate exercise to buy 80% equity stake in V Telecoms Bhd, which has a paid-up capital of RM502mil. V Telecoms holds network facilities provider and NSP network services provider licences.
Yusof said V Telecoms had thus far invested RM500mil to build a fibre optic network that spanned the length of Peninsular Malaysia. As it does not have enough fibre in the ground, the company also buys capacity from other telecoms providers to cater to the needs of its clients which are mostly multinational corporations and some telcos. “It is a 50:50 combination between our own fibre and what we lease from others now. We need to expand our network and our target is to invest RM1bil by the year-end for this purpose,” Yusof said.
V Telecoms’ investment far had been sourced via private equity and internal funding. The company has also just completed a fund-raising exercise for an additional RM100mil by issuing redeemable convertible cumulative preference shares.
“We will need to raise more funding in the market for our expansion and we intend to source funding via private equity funds and high net worth individuals,” said Yusof.
According to V Telecoms executive director Anthony Suppiah, wholesale makes up 70% of the company’s business and retail the remaining 30%. With the 1Gbps community broadband product, the company expects to reach out to more residential users to grow its retail business.
“With 1Gbps, the network is capable of delivering very high speed broadband and can even cater for video streaming and IPTV (Internet protocol TV) besides voice connectivity. The residential offering will be available in Capital Square in Kuala Lumpur, The Loft in Bangsar and KL Sentral. We are charging RM199 per month for the 1Gpbs,” he said.
Asked how the company could stand alongside bigger players with deep pockets and a much wider reach, Anthony said “we are not in competition with other fibre optic players, we see ourselves as complementing them. Our challenge is how we can brand ourselves to be a provider and expand at the speed the market demands. That, to us, is more crucial.”
http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/8/21/business/6896284&sec=business
Hi, in this article, V Telecoms mentioned that they use 60% own fibre optics & 50% lease from others. I wonder do they lease from TM or TDC ? TDC in its website they've mention about new technology DWDM, is it a threat to TM ? Appreciate your views. Tks
ReplyDeletesn6188, As business commercial arrangement, V Telecom may opt for the provider that can give special package whether from TDC or TM. I am quite skeptical how V Telecom can compete by using competitors backbone to roll out the service. Definitely the price offering might be higher than TDC and TM.
ReplyDeleteHowever I am not in the position to make the statement whether they will lease from TM, TDc or even Maxis. Maxis as we now, is the integrated telco in Malaysia. they have mobile,fixed,tv astro(about 20 years monopoly agreement) ,satellite and others license in telecommunication field.Even, company Potong broadband also lease the backbone from TM(based on within my knowledge and understanding), than they ask our customers potong service from TM and subscribe their service (aggressively end of last year). Quite funny, but it makes people at TM wake up aggressively also.
About DWDM, for me.. it is only about technology. I believed that even for those company that have an ordinary technology, but if their people are creative, they still will be able to survive. But In TM and at any other telcos, in term of technology, I believed everyone is looking for that(upgrading), especially for those can reduce cost in the long run and can reduce the dependency of labor incentive as experience in the Fixed line business.
For example, without mobile license, TM still able to survive about 3 year after de merger with celcom and TM International(Now Axiata). This is actually the biggest threat and challenge for TM. Just imagine if you are salespeople..it is more easy to sell mobile broadband compared to selling fixed broadband. For mobile, you just need to show USB drive to the customer, sell and plug and play. But for fixed, a lot of process after that.
Last time when TM start to develop mobile network and international business, it was supported and funded by Tm fixed line income. But nowadays, when HSBB rollout started, the mobile which suppose to support for new generation network deployment was not with TM anymore. The actual fact people at TM need to face the challenge and pain again. Regards