The Multimedia Super Corridor has placed too much emphasis on luring foreign direct investments and has ignored the need of domestic end-users who should have benefitted from the project, said a local netpreneur today.

VoicesAcrossAsia Netcaster chief executive officer Damien Ong-Yeoh said a substantial number of all the MSC-status companies are foreign multinationals, which are leading the innovation of multimedia products and services.

"The local companies are more on the receiving end where they are merely consuming the end-products," said Damien who currently oversees Asia's first family-orientated Internet radio, asia-family.com.

Recently, the government had claimed that the MSC was a great success amid the US economic slowdown, saying that the 554 companies which have registered with the MSC thus far had exceeded expectations.

The government's initial plan targeted some 500 MSC-status companies by the year 2003.

Cooperation-shy companies

However, Damien told malaysiakini that despite the figures, the MSC has not been successful in promoting collaboration among local users and innovators of multimedia products and services in the country.

"We have spent a lot of money to develop the physical infrastructures but this is just part of a corporate exercise. We have forgotten about the end-users," said Damien, who was on the founding team of Malaysia's pioneer search engine Catcha.com.

He also noted that Malaysian telecommunication companies are rather hesitant about cooperation and prefer to act independently.

"One company may have the best fibre optics in the country but the other company which has the phone line controls the last mile. Problem arises when these companies refuse to work together," he said.

Earlier this year, consulting firm McKinsey & Co in its review on the progress of the MSC reported that many local companies which have set up shop in the corridor have not become customers or suppliers of information technology solutions.

The report also urged the telecommunication companies, particularly the national phone company Telekom Malaysia to improve its services.

True policy

Meanwhile, broadcasting and publishing expert Rosihan Zain Baharudin said the MSC was a good idea but was not implemented properly.

"We have put in billions of ringgit but the results on our people are not that impressive," said Rosihan.

This shows that the question in hand is not about infrastructures but the government's determination to cultivate individual talents and creativity among the people, he added.

"What we need is a true policy and culture to provide a suitable environment for talents and intellectuality to flourish," said Rosihan, who is the producer of Malaysia's first digital movie Lips to Lips which won international acclaim.

Rosihan said the public should not overlook the fact that only one out of every 10 Malaysian has access to the Internet.

He pointed that the MSC should learn from several developed countries such as Japan and see human development as its ultimate purpose, saying, "excessive foreign investment is just a shortcut to developing technology."

The MSC is a 15-by-50 km strip in south of Kuala Lumpur that runs from the 88-storey Petronas Twin Towers to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

The area includes the new administrative capital of Putrajaya and the software development city Cyberjaya.

Despite criticism that the MSC has not contributed significantly to the country's economy, the government and a number of foreign experts defended the project, claiming that it is still attractive to foreign investors and able to transform the country into the regional IT hub.

Damien and Rosihan were both panelists at a forum held earlier on the future of electronic media organised by web-based broadcasting company RadiqRadio.com in Petaling Jaya.