Regulation Change Did Not Impact Telekom Malaysia’s Overall 2018 Business Performance, but Pushed TM to Accelerate Its Transformation

A. Amir

Summary Bullets:

• Telekom Malaysia (TM) survived a challenging 2018 with stable business performance despite a huge decline in net profit.
• TM is expected to bounce back in 2019 with growth in enterprise, driven by PIP 2019 and a vertical focus.

2018 was a challenging year for telcos in Malaysia. The Mandatory Standard on Access Pricing (MSAP), set by the new government, has pushed down connectivity prices in the country. As the domestic fixed-line market leader with a connection share of 66% (source: GlobalData Malaysia Telecom Forecast Q4 2018), Telekom Malaysia was heavily impacted by this new regulation. The provider had to reduce its connectivity service price by around 40% whilst offering up to 10 times the speed for some of its packages in order to meet the new regulation. As a result, credit rating agencies such as Fitch revised the company’s outlook from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’ and the S&P changed TM’s profile from ‘intermediate’ to ‘modest’ last year. Its share price went down by 57.0%, from RM6.18 (at the beginning of 2018) to only RM2.66 at the end of the year. (It has gone back up since November and closed at RM3.18 on March 8, 2019.)

Optus and Cisco Join Forces to Target SMBs in Australia

S. Soh

Summary Bullets:

• Optus has partnered with Cisco to launch two new offerings at Cisco Live 2019 – Optus Cloud Calling (BroadCloud) and Managed Cloud networking (Meraki).

• The combination of NBN, LTE, SD-WAN, and cloud UC will meet the needs of many SMBs and branch office scenarios.

Optus and Cisco continue to strengthen their relationship. At the Cisco Live 2019 event in Melbourne, Australia, Optus was the key sponsor and it used the event to announce new Cisco-based solutions. The first solution is Optus Cloud Calling which is a unified communications (UC) service based on Cisco’s (formerly Broadsoft) BroadCloud platform. This is cloud-based UC solution hosted by Cisco. The service offers telephony, native mobility, and advanced conferencing and collaboration tools. BroadCloud is integrated with Webex solutions to assess audio/video conferencing and team collaboration applications. Optus Business is providing this service as a managed service bundled with its Evolved Voice SIP trunking and business mobile services.