IN THIS modern world, it is no exaggeration to say that many Malaysians, of all ages and walks of life, depend on the internet for communication. I for one am an active user of it for both business and leisure.

However, what becomes my nightmare (and for a lot of people too) is that every time I have to get out of the office especially away from the big city, I would face difficulty in getting good broadband connections.

This happens a lot whenever I go to smaller towns where the service is slow and sometimes there is no service at all.

Here, I would like to pose a question to the concerned parties. What’ is the use of having hi-tech, state-of-the-art laptops if it is not fully usable?

It’s not my intention to blame anyone, but in this case I don’t think the finger should be pointed at the government. We should consider ourselves fortunate as we are ‘well off’ than some of our neighbours.

In fact, I applaud the government for coming up with various efforts such as the High Speed Broadband Project (HSBB) and the push for greater accessibility through the WiMAX rollout. It was reported that RM30 million will be allocated for the promotion and the awareness of HSBB alone!

The ones that should be more assertive and show greater responsibility are the service providers like the Telco players and WiMAX operators.

For the past months we have been reading a lot in the media about greater things to come for the country’s broadband solutions and applications and we wait in great anticipation but alas, to no avail.

For those concerned, do buck-up instead of coming up with more promises and showing nothing at the end of the day.

It is time to show your worth and ‘walk the talk’ as we are willing to part with our ‘good money’ in getting ‘good services’.

Internet Generation
Kuala Lumpur

Source: The Sun – August 1, 2008