Revoking broadband licenses in Malaysia

I was curious when a colleague mentioned this yesterday and I found this on Malaysia Today:

25/04: Broadband licenses debated in Malaysia
Category: General
Posted by: Raja Petra
Opposition urges Malaysia not to revoke wireless broadband licenses

(AP) -- An opposition leader on Tuesday urged the Malaysian government not to revoke licenses of seven wireless broadband Internet providers, warning that such a move would be a blow to investment in the industry.

Communications Minister Lim Keng Yaik earlier this month said the licenses may be canceled because the frequency on which they operate is interfering with transmissions of the recently launched Measat-3 communications satellite and its Earth station.

Opposition leader Lim Kit Siang warned the move would throw some 400 workers out of their jobs and scuttle investment plans for about $85.7 million over the next two years.

He said the seven companies -- Airzed Broadband, Atlas One, EB Technologies, Maxis Communications, NasionCom Holdings, Telekom Malaysia and Time dotCom -- had already invested more than $114 million on their operations, and it would be unfair to have their investments go to waste...

(for the rest of the article, click here)

I really do wonder if the minister has properly thought through the sticky problem before jumping to a conclusion. Maybe he is facing undue pressure from the interested party. However you see it, it just doesn't make sense to revoke licenses for seven companies who have been operating and providing the broadband service since 2003 just because in the midst of it all some oversight happened and an interested party decided to shoot a satellite into space operating in a frequency that clashes with these operators.

We're not even sure who we should be pointing the finger at (favourite tactic of Malaysians) considering the government is the one that controls the frequency blocks, and yet they couldn't seem to prevent two different services (one video/tv while the other more general internet broadband) from working in the same frequency band. It is even more ridiculous when one of the suggested workarounds is to force the seven companies to use Measat-3 for their service. Why would the government want to create another situation of a monopoly when we have competition now? Lim Kit Siang who raised this in Parliament further pointed out that the capacity of Measat-3 is but only a fraction of the total broadband capacity of the companies, so it really boggles the mind why the minister would want a "solution" which is worse than the current.

Let's hope sanity would prevail over the minister and his officials. We really can't afford to make decisions which are solely to protect the interests of particular companies when there is a much bigger benefit to protect the interests of all Malaysians. Unless, of course, this is part of the conspiracy theory that the government is purposely limiting broadband penetration so as to keep the majority of Malaysians in the dark. After all, losing the monopoly on information is one of the reasons why the present administration is panicking over the influence of bloggers and websites.