KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 19 — Telekom Malaysia (TM) has today expressed its readiness to contribute significantly in the recently launched Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint or MyDigital. 

In a statement today, its managing director and group chief executive officer, Imri Mokhtar said the MyDigital is a holistic approach encompassing digital connectivity (fibre and 5G), digital infrastructure (cloud and cybersecurity) as well as digital skillsets and talents, towards making life and business easier for Malaysians as a connected nation. 

“TM is ready and excited to play a significant part in this accelerated journey,” Imri said. 

Additionally Imri, on behalf of TM, also thanked the government for an opportunity to be appointed as the only home-based cloud service provider (CSP) to serve the public sector together with the appointed managed service provider (MSP).  

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“Today, TM has established itself as a leading end-to-end cloud and data centre service provider that provides data residency, locality and sovereignty in Malaysia — serving both our public sector and enterprise customers,” he said. 

Earlier today, the government announced conditional approvals for four CSPs to build and manage “hyper-scale” data centres and cloud services. 

“Cloud” refers to the digital data stored by data centres with servers that are connected to the Internet and can be accessed by other users. 

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The announcement among others, is in line with the government’s efforts in accelerating and creating an effective ecosystem, and paving a digital infrastructure under the MyDigital initiative.  

The CSPs are expected to invest between RM12 billion to RM15 billion over the next five years. 

The four CSP companies apart from TM are Microsoft, Google and Amazon. 

“We believe such public and private collaboration will propel our country today and tomorrow, towards a full-fledged Digital Malaysia by 2030 — a more digital society, digital business and digital government,” Imri added. 

In today’s launch, Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said the government will spend up to RM56 billion on infrastructure for faster and wider internet connectivity under a 10-year plan aimed at developing the country’s digital economy. 

Nearly half of the budget will go into the National Digital Connectivity (Jendela) programme, a five-year plan to expand fixed fibre optic internet coverage to nine million premises by 2025 from 7.5 million in 2022. 

“TM supports Jendela and is an active and major contributor in the nationwide fiberisation effort to greatly improve broadband coverage and quality. 

“The current 570,000km of fibre length across Malaysia is expected to grow rapidly over the next few years, in tandem with the Jendela implementation,” Imri said.