Islamic telephony in Indonesia, regulator challenges in Malaysia and Thailand, attempts to fix the dumb pipe model in Brunei and operating in the niche market of Laos were among the highlights of panels at Carriers World Asia.
Malaysia
Dato Rosman Ridzwan, deputy chairman of U-Mobile, the new entrant in Malaysia's mobile arena said that despite all the hype and the entry of Wimax players, Voice still makes up the bulk, between 60% to 70% of revenue for most operators in Malaysia.
Broadband penetration is around 2.8 million out of 28 million.
U-Mobile now has the West of Malaysia covered in 42 Mbps 3G and is “lucky” to be last to market as most of the equipment can be upgraded to 4G. 84 Mbps is just a software upgrade and 100+ MBPS is possible with a radio swap with its ZTE equipment.
Ridzwan said that when his company bid for the 3G licence, it was on the assumption that there was still space in the market for a fourth player. However, soon after, the government issued a number of Wimax licences and changed the market dynamics.
The major shareholders of U-Mobile also run Starbucks in Malaysia and this opens up the door for cross-promotion. They also own a chain of book stores.
Brunei
Idris T. Vasi, CEO of DST Brunei is focusing on customer retention through building broadband, mobile, pay TV and even paying for electricity bills through SMS pay-as-you-go top-ups.
Brunei may be a small country but in terms of percentage engaged in social networking, it ranks among the top ten in the world.
He said that the industry need a better way to share revenue. When someone downloads an app from Apple's iTunes, the revenue is shared between Apple and the developer, but it is the telco who has invested billions and billions that has made it possible. Something has to change.
Yet while that nut is being cracked, capex in networks needs to continue to support the huge growth in data. 4G LTE is now being mulled as data offload by many players. The regulator also continues to raise the bar in terms of service quality.