The possibility of providing cheap and widely available high speed telecommunication and multimedia service in Sarawak can be achieved if the cost of building the infrastructure and its operation could be reduced.
For that, a liberal policy should be put in place for the use of existing and future infrastructure that would allow multiplayers’ participation in the provision of such service, according to Chief Minister YAB Datuk Patinggi (Dr) Abang Haji Abdul Rahman Zohari Tun Datuk Abang Haji Openg.
“If the price is high and not within the affordability of the users, they won’t change to digital (platforms). So this has to be done through multiplayer (approach),” he said at the closing of the High Performance Team (HPT) Retreat 2017 at a leading hotel in Malacca on 10 December 2017.
He elaborated that similar approach has been proven effective in other countries such as Estonia, where the multiplayer environment has successfully allowed 4G Internet to be widely available.
Thus, the Chief Minister was confident that the implementation of such liberal policy would help reduce the cost of providing a state-wide Internet infrastructure and international gateways to the outside world greatly, which would be a boost in Sarawak’s aspiration of becoming a high-income state through digital transformation.
Meanwhile, the three-day retreat saw the participation of about 170 officers, where they deliberated on charting the way forward in Sarawak’s quest to leapfrog from a conventional to a digital economy.
Earlier, State Secretary YB Tan Sri Datuk Amar Haji Mohamad Morshidi Abdul Ghani presented a resolution resulting from lab sessions covering 17 areas that were tailored towards achieving the goal of transformation towards the digital economy.
