TM mulls revising prices of offerings

KUALA LUMPUR: Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) is considering revising the prices of some of its offerings in view of stiff competition, said its managing director and group CEO Tan Sri Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa.
“We are in a competitive environment so of course, price reviews and so on will be market driven. Where we see fit to compete on price, we’ll compete on price but, mainly, TM wants to compete on value,” he told reporters after its AGM and EGM yesterday.
“So it is not just pure price, but more importantly it is on the value that we can provide to the customer,” he added.
He said the group’s main revenue contributor is broadband and data services, where it has introduced new plans namely UniFi Advance and UniFi PRO, which provides customers with better experience through higher speeds and value-added packages.
“Once we have those higher (speed) packages, it is about how well we can up-sell those services to our customers. So we are seeing very encouraging growth with customers moving up to higher speeds. About 56% of our total broadband customers are now on 4Mbps and above,” he added.
According to its annual report, TM has 2.34 million broadband customers of which 56% are on high speed packages of 4Mbps and above while 46% of its 839,000 UniFi customers are on packages of 10Mbps and above.
Broadband players have come under pressure with the entry of new players with much better offerings. For example, TIME dotCom Bhd has been aggressively promoting its high-speed internet plans, offering 100mpbs for RM149 for home broadband users.
On the High Speed Broadband Phase 2 project, Zamzamzairani said nearly 180,000 ports have been rolled out to date and it is aggressively rolling out more ports to achieve its target of 390,000 ports by 2017.
On subsea cable projects, group CFO Datuk Bazlan Osman said the group will look at requirements to upgrade subsea cable systems or participate in new subsea cable systems.
“Normally, subsea cable systems are done by way of consortium with other carriers. So it is subject to requirement for capacity and to carry the traffic in and out of Malaysia, and also other regions as well because we also do with carriers of other regions,” he said.