CYBERJAYA: The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said only Telekom Malaysia Bhd ’s (TM) Streamyx service did not meet its quality standards last year.

It is worth noting that TM’s Streamyx uses digital subscriber line (DSL) broadband technology while its unifi service, which uses fibre-optic cables, had met the MCMC standards.

MCMC chairman Al-Ishsal Ishak said all telecommunication providers had met the Mandatory Standards Quality of Service that was set up in 2016.

“MCMC is working with TM to migrate the Streamyx service to fibre optic,” Al-Ishsal said at a briefing on the agency’s Network Performance Report for 2018.

The report covered topics like performance of wired broadband, wireless broadband and public cellular services.

According to Al-Ishsal, as a result of migration and take-up of packages with higher download speed, Speedtest Global Index by Ookla reported in December that fixed-broadband download speeds in Malaysia increased by almost threefold to 63.48Mbps as compared to 22.26Mbps a year ago.

“Malaysia was ranked 29th in the world as compared with 56th in 2017,” he said.

Overall, he said, the country’s telecommunication sector improved significantly in 2018.

Malaysia rose six places from 41 to 35 in the International Telecommunication Union’s fixed-broadband price basket category and saw a massive jump of 25 places from 61 to 36 in the mobile prepaid handset for 500MB.

On the next generation of wireless connectivity fifth-generation networks (5G), Al-Ishsal said the agency had received about 14 proposals for the infrastructure.

“We are going to have 5G testbed in Putrajaya for telcos, vendors and technology adopters to carry out trials and showcase,” he said.

He added that there is a national 5G Task Force to study and recommend a holistic strategy for 5G deployment in Malaysia.

On Huawei Technologies Co’s involvement in building its 5G infrastructure in Malaysia, Al-Ishsal said the National Cyber Security Agency is doing its assessment.

“Following the assessment, if there is a next step to be taken, MCMC would be in the forefront of it,” he said.

There had been various reports globally on the ban of Chinese equipment supplier Huawei for the installation of the next-generation wireless networks.