THE lack of transparency appears to be rearing its head again in the matter of spectrum allocation as the nation moves towards 5G.
Recall that, on June 2, a directive from the Ministry of Communications and Multimedia signed by minister Saifuddin Abdullah had instructed the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to allocate spectrum bandwidth for 5G to five companies.
They were Telekom Malaysia Bhd, Celcom Axiata Bhd, units from Maxis Bhd and DiGi.Com Bhd, and Altel Communications Sdn Bhd, which is owned by tycoon Syed Mokhtar Albukhary.
However, this opened the ministry up to backlash as the spectrum awards were through direct negotiations instead of by open tender, as per the original statement on Jan 1 by MCMC.
A day later, the ministry retracted its order, with the minister ordering the cancellation on grounds of “technical issues, laws, and the need for a transparent process”.
“I have instructed the chairman of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to cancel the awards, and to inspect the instruments involved immediately,” Saifuddin had said in a statement.
Now, it has been five weeks since the directive was revealed, and subsequently overturned, and seven weeks since the directive was signed. Yet, there have been no updates on this.
Two questions:. Dear minister, would a transparent process not involve informing the public about the progress of the matter?
Second, with weeks since the directive was overturned, were there no actions taken by the telcos seeing they probably needed to halt works related to 5G?
For that matter, why are the telcos strangely silent on the matter?
It is something to ponder and keep in view as Malaysia returns to normalcy. – July 9, 2020
