COMMENT It is time that the newly-minted Multimedia and Communication Minister Salleh Said Keruak understands where we are as a country in the digital era, before he starts opening his mouth.

Short of just five years to 2020, we are still lagging behind a number of other countries in the Asia Pacific region.

As pointed out by DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang, we are nowhere near the developed nations and in most parts of the country, especially Sabah (where Salleh hails from) and Sarawak, there is hardly any Internet connection.

Less than five years ago, I wanted to subscribe to mobile broadband, but after testing all three Internet Service Providers (ISP) - Maxis, Celcom, P1 - I had to give up and go for something as simple as Streamyx with a speed of less than one megabits per second.

Although all the ISPs promised high speed, the speed was hardly achievable despite the fact that my housing estate is just some 20 kilometres from the Kuala Lumpur City Centre.

I recall having to raise my complaints frequently with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) when I testing Celcom broadband for slightly over 12 months. Although having two Internet connection simultaneously, I had to depend mainly on the Streamyx connection.

Less than three months ago, I was also experiencing frequent breakdowns which made me decide to terminate ABNXcess, and each time, it took about a week to repair. To switch to Maxis broadband, the waiting period was exactly one month!

Benchmark measure

Personally, I am surprised that Salleh, like his predecessor, has so shallow knowledge about the status of our country’s ICT Development Index (IDI), a benchmark measure published by the International Telecommunications Union on the level of development in ICT sector.

For the sake of the minister, the annual report ‘Measuring the Information Society Report 2014' can be downloaded from the Internet here .

The IDI is used to compare one country to another country and is based on 11 internationally agreed ICT indicators used by governments (which includes the Malaysian government), operators, development agencies and researchers. There are three categories of sub-indices or clusters measured (Access, Use and Skills) which makes the IDI comprehensive enough to tell us where we are as a nation.

The survey is objective; therefore, Salleh should not worry that it is yet another of the opposition or another international conspiracy to unseat Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.

As I have said before, if Najib has to go, he has to go, but life has to go on. There is no point defending the indefensible and unless Najib provides plausible answers to all the questions raised, he is as good as gone in the eyes of the people.

Back to the IDI. Based on a scale of 0 to 10, Malaysia’s IDI is 5.20 based on a report published by ITU last year. It is ranked third in the Asean region, lagging behind Singapore (7.90) and only trailing behind Brunei (5.43); therefore, how can Salleh claim that Malaysia is (in his own words) “definitely ahead of the rest of Asia”?

Even Macau (7.66) is way ahead of Malaysia. Malaysia is not even among the top seven ICT champions in Asia, whereas our neighbour, Singapore is in fifth placing in the order of South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand and Macau.

Despite being just across the causeway, Singapore ranked among the top 25 on the global IDI in 2014. From a total of 166 countries surveyed, Malaysia is ranked at the 70th position in 2013, down six notches down compared to its 64th placing in 2012.

Can the minister please tell us whether we are now anywhere near our benchmark as a developed nation by 2020? This is despite all the money pumped into the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), once touted to be Malaysia’s Silicon Valley?

Why should things start with a big bang but subsequently, the successors fail to pick up from what was left behind? For example, former multimedia and communications minister Ahmad Shabery Cheek promised that broadband prices would drop, but he is now gone and replaced by Salleh. Is this another of Barisan Nasional’s many empty promises?

eAsean pact signed 15 years ago

This year, Malaysia is the chair of the Asean Economic Region.

In November 2000, nearly 15 years ago, during the Asean Informal Summit which was held in Singapore, the eAsean agreement was signed, providing a framework intended to enhance the living standards of Asean nationals through the use of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

While holidaying in Langkawi last weekend, I was shocked to find that in most parts of the country, there was no Internet connection to allow us to use Waze to check on the traffic condition along the entire stretch of the Plus North-South Expressway.

Unless Salleh wants Malaysia to lag behind countries like Cambodia (IDI 2.61), Lao PDR (IDI 2.35) and Myanmar (IDI 1.80) in some of the rural areas, Malaysia should be playing a lead role in narrowing the digital divide instead of basking in the past glories.

We should be moving ahead and benchmarking ourselves against the best in IDI scoring, if we are truly serious about becoming an advanced nation.

In terms of affordability, if Malaysia is affirmative about moving up the scale, it should reduce the prices of the broadband services so that more people can afford. This is not a question of what Malaysians can afford, but to achieve higher broadband penetration and the economies of scale so that the telcos will still enjoy high profit margins after reducing the prices.

Salleh should make it a point to bring down the prices of the broadband services in the country. It is not that telcos have not been enjoying huge profit margins, but it is time that prices of broadband should be reduced substantially to encourage more people to switch from a lower speed to high speed connection.

Based on the same ITU report in 2014, the Purchasing Power Parity (in dollars) for Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia are still high for both fixed-line and mobile cellular phone services, compared to Singapore and Vietnam.

Does that explain to you why Salleh should focus his attention on bringing down the prices of broadband, instead of blaming it on the lack of affordability of Malaysians to adopt the high speed Internet connection?

In countries like South Korea, for example, people do not talk about Internet speeds of less than 10 Mbps. Like South Korea, Malaysia was once upon a time one of the five roaring tigers of Asia but in the digital age, we are still at the bottom of the spectrum.

This is exactly what Kit Siang is talking about, if at all it makes sense to Salleh now.

If the government can reduce the prices of broadband, I am sure most of us would prefer to have a higher speed.

Who would want to endure the poor connectivity and Internet speeds that makes a conversation over Skype, not to mention teleconferencing, almost impossible for most Malaysians?

Salleh, as a cabinet minister, should prove his worth by taking the country into the next level in the digital era and make every effort to close the digital gap between the urban and rural communities.

This is his role and responsibility, not as Najib’s public relations manager or propagandist. If he wants to compete with Rahman Dahlan, who is the official Barisan Nasional strategic communications director, he should just resign from the cabinet and become Najib’s publicist.

STEPHEN NG is an ordinary citizen with an avid interest in following political developments in the country since 2008.