MCMC’s new chairman faces many challenging issues

by B.K. Sidhu

STAR, 21 October 2011

DATUK Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi has got himself onto a “hot seat”.

The task at hand is arduous as there are a lot of issues that need sorting out.

Despite that, there were many others vying for the hot seat. Perhaps it is the power that comes with the position that attracts so much interest.

Sharil is the new chairman of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and his appointment is effective Sunday. He takes over from Tan Sri Khalid Ramli, who during his two-year term, was well known for helping to widen the reach of Internet to the interiors of the country.

Sharil is akin to a homegrown candidate as he has been with the commission for nearly a decade, although he left after his first six-year stint but came back in 2008 to become chief operating officer.

Globally, he has worked on various projects with the International Communications Union. So his appointment as MCMC chairman came as no surprise to the industry.

But the job that awaits him may surprise him as there are loads of issues and the journey could be arduous.
The biggest issue is transparency and he needs to address that, be it from the way the Universal Service Provider funds are used to how the 2.6G spectrum is being allocated to nine players, the deafening silence over the 700MHz spectrum and the long-overdue tender bid for terrestrial digital TV, among others.

The way he handles them would be closely watched both locally and globally as foreign investors want to know how sound the policies are for them to invest, or whether the would be flip-flops.

This becomes more pressing since the Government has said in the Budget 2012 proposals that 17 services sub-sectors, including telecoms, would be liberalised and the idea behind that is to attract foreign direct investments (FDIs). The country needs FDIs and the area of content and services can do with some foreign players.

Looking from the licensing regime, it took a new format and course when the vertical type of licensing that is based on technology type of services was changed to a horizontal type of services, thereby creating different categories of players such as network facilities providers (NFPs), network service providers (NSPs), application service providers (ASPs) and content application services providers (CASPs).

As someone put it: “It is meant to be an inverted pyramid with smaller numbers of NFPs, a bit more NSPs, and open basket of ASPs and CASPs. The rationale was to have more NSPs and ASPs so that there will be competition and choices but along the way, we may have given too many NFPs and this has resulted in a lot of investments going into network infrastructure building, thereby creating duplication of networks.''

There are also lessons to be learnt from the second round of 3G spectrum award. One company that deserved the spectrum did not get it but two others were given. One of the two did not roll out the services and eventually sold the spectrum to the deserving company, but at a high premium. So, future award of spectrum has to be done with thorough evaluations.

Malaysia was one of the first countries to introduce convergence but it is hard to benchmark the achievements because along the way, the theme of convergence somehow has got diluted.

Whatever has been done up to now has served a specific purpose although the glaring issue over clarity remains. We need the better of it.

Perhaps the first thing that Sharil can do is to take stock and do some soul searching to set things straight for the better of consumers, the industry and the nation. But time is a factor and he knows that too well.

My bet is that the dynamics of change is apparent at the commission. So, stay tuned.