Malaysia has experienced tremendous yearly jumps in its Internet bandwidth consumption, with total consumption jumping to 760,331Mbps in 2014, up from 349,277Mbps in 2013; an increase of 218 percent. This is according to the latest statistics released by Malaysian Internet Exchange (MyIX), an initiative under the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).
“MCMC’s survey in 2011 showed that about 36 million phone users were subscribed in Malaysia in 2011; this rose to nearly 45 million by the end of 2014 with a 148.5 penetration rate per inhabitant,” said MyIX Chairman, Chiew Kok Hin.
“In addition, the other factors that contribute to the increase of Internet consumption in 2014 include a greater prevalence of social media platforms and users from Facebook to Instagram; the use of applications such as MyTeksi and Uber; online game’s from Dota to Candy Crush; increased e-commerce purchases and more are some of the other contributing factors,” he further added.
“The internet has now become a staple necessity for Malaysians and the government’s move to decrease the price of broadband connection by June 2015 is commendable. In order for more Malaysian’s to be able to access the internet, we welcome similar initiatives by the Government in the near future.”
MYIX WELCOMES MORE FOREIGN PEERING PARTNERS
MyIX was set up in 2006 to allow Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to mutually peer with each other to keep the country’s Internet traffic domestic.
This ability is significant to the development of the Internet landscape as peering enables ISPs to talk to each other instead of previously, where data had to ‘travel out of the country and back’ for web content, making connectivity very expensive. Via peering, MyIX allows for the reduction of data traffic having to go through ‘international routes’ – thus driving down the prices of broadband continually over the last nine years.
Today, MyIX which practices an ‘open interconnection policy,’ currently has 78 members consisting of all local ISPs and foreign players such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Akamai, Microsoft, Biznet Networks, Hutchison Global, Swiftserve and Telstra.
“MyIX has been peering with Facebook since 2012. We constantly monitor Malaysians Internet usage patterns and work with the relevant foreign players to ensure the internet surfing experience of the average Malaysian is better. A site that is peered to MyIX will load faster and this will mean that both the site and the users will benefit from an enhanced surfing experience,” explains Chiew in response to Jelutong Representative Jeff Ooi Chuan Aun’s concern on MYIX that was raised in parliament in regards to MyIX peering to Facebook.
“We hope more foreign players from social media sites to e-commerce platforms that are looking to increase their market reach in Malaysia, will contact us to peer locally to enable their Malaysian users to access their sites faster,” he concluded.
