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Related entries:
1. Broadband in Malaysia = below par
2. CEOs gives thumb down
3. Minister: Malaysian Telcos need to improve their services

Broadband in Malaysia = Below par

Consistent with the previous entry on broadband services in Malaysia (CEO Survey), another research report by a team from Multimedia University indicated that broadband services in Malaysia in below par (equal to quite bad) as compared to other countries such as Singapore and Japan.

Main concerns will be:

• Lack of qualified workers to implement and manage broadband services.
• Lack of skilled workers at the service centres.
• Rural areas cannot get access to the broadband.

Source: TheStar InTech 24th April 2007.

UTP Campus goes wireless

Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) campus will goes wireless with the signing of partnership with Telekom Malaysia in providing broadband access for the campus. A total of 37 access nodes will be installed to provide the coverage which will cost RM400,000 per year.

Students can now access to the Internet at anytime and anywhere on campus by logging in using their student IDs and using any Wi-Fi compatible mobile device or computer.


Sooner or later, I believe all universities will have their own campus going wireless. May be in the future, students can access to the lectures from anywhere as long as in the campus through live video conferencing systems.

While we are going for more wireless campus in Malaysia, elsewhere in Canada, US and UK, some universities actually banned the application of wireless in the campus due to the worries about the health impact of the 2.4Ghz radio waves used by wireless networks. Read here for more.

Another case of wi-fi "theft"

I put up an entry on a Singaporean youth being caught for "stealing" his neighbour wi-fi connection previously.

Now in UK, similar cases were reported but in these cases the offenders were just being cautioned for using the wireless connection without permission or to be precise being dishonestly obtaining electronic communications services with intent to avoid payment.

Read here and here for the complete story.

Again, the issue that would like to highlight here is who's responsibility to secure the home WIFI systems? Is it Owner or Service Provider? In this case, the police advised people with wi-fi should follow security advice given by their internet provider.

Broadband Internet Services: CEOs give the thumb down!

These are some findings from the TEC-MIER Confident Index Survey (conducted by Executives Working Together (TEC) Asia and the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research) which was participated by 170 CEOs in Malaysia.

• 70% - Broadband Internet access slow
• 64% - Service providers are generally inefficient
• 56% - Inadequate broadband coverage
• 35% - Need to have a better-defined government policy on broadband services.

Source: TheStar InTech, 17th April 2007

Personal Opinion:
My personal experience on the broadband Internet access is not so encouraging. The line was down frequently, slow and sometimes unable to log in as well. I believe the broadband services licences should be expanded to a few more companies to avoid monopoly by the current services providers which in turn will provide the required competition for better and cheaper services. I am really looking forward for the WIMAX services which is due to be launched in the coming few years.

Advertlets.com - Asian Weblog Advertising Network

This is a weblog marketing network that should be participated by Malaysian bloggers as part of your online money making revenue model, besides being a new e-commerce business model. Advertlets.com is not just another Asian version ala Google Adsense. The simple yet catchy theme of advertisers + bloggers = money + happy indicates that there are more than just earning the money from this program. The community services provided is expanding from donation to charity. (Hopefully there will be more free trips, gifts, vouchers especially and gatherings in the future, hahaha).

There are 3 most important attraction of joining the advertlets namely local content, its hybrid polling and advertising feature, and getting paid in local currency. (Yes! in RM instead of USD).


Local content:
Most of the advertisments are designed with the local content. After all, majority of our readers are our friends. So obviously it would be more advantages for the local advertisers to grab this opportunity of the efficiency of targeted advertisment towards the local markets, particularly the local blog readers. Local contents enable the readers to conduct the transaction conveniently minus the worries of high shipping costs incurred besides faster delivery time.

Hybrid polling and advertising feature:
This innovative feature is definitely plus point with the ability for bloggers to make custom poll. The rotation feature is providing another new experience for readers. This enable the advertisers to come out with new e-commerce business model.


Paid in RM:
This is definitely something that I am looking forward to. As most of the advertisers would pay in USD, the payment in RM is very beneficial for local bloggers as no conversion rate is needed to be applied to the payment (with RM is getting stronger against the USD nowadays, we are getting less after the conversion). Another problem lurking on our local bloggers is the processing fees inposed by the banks in processing the foreign check. Different banks have different rates - some can be quite high where a big chunk of your payment will be disappeared. With local cheque, basically we are getting the nett of what we have earned.

That's sum up: Advertlets = More Money + Happy Blogging.

Making money online - E-Commerce Revenue Model

E-Commerce revenue models specifically describe different techniques used in generating income from the publisher's websites. As the e-commerce progress, the traditional revenue model of sales is expanded to more variety of revenue options and e-commerce business model.

Publishers is referred as the website content provider as well as individual bloggers' blogs.

The common techniques are:

Sales - Sales of goods, merchandise information and services provided in the publishers' websites. Example: Dell.com is generating sales revenue from its notebooks, Amazon.com is selling books, ABC Consultant may be generating income from their consultancy services online.

Transaction fees - Commission earned based on either the volume of the transactions (the higher the volume, the higher the transaction fees will be) or fee per transaction conducted at the website (a fixed fee per trade regardless of the volume). Example: E-Bay may earned transaction fees from each successful transaction made by the bidders or sellers.

Advertisement fees - Publishers can allocate some advertisements spaces in their website for other companies to place their banners or advertisement, in return for a fee named advertisement fees. A major percentage of Yahoo and Google's yearly income is generated from the advertisement fees. Small companies and bloggers can also provide advertisement space for interested parties.

Subscription fees - customers would have to pay a fixed amount of fees either monthly or yearly when they are subscribing to contents and services offered by the website. Example: Yearly subscription fees for accessing the online journal databases, privileged discounts for members.

Affiliate fees - Companies receive commissions for referring customers to others' websites. It can include CPM (cost per thousand impressions), CPC (cost per click) and CPA (cost per acquisition/action). These methods are becoming more and more popular nowsaday especially for bloggers. Example: Google Adsense, Amazon.com Associates affiliate programme, Advertlets.com (I wrote a review here), Nuffnang (Asia 1st Blog Advertising Community) and lots more. This section will be further elaborated in the near future.

Most of the professional bloggers use the combination of affiliate, transaction and advertisement strategies in generating income. Example: Liewcf, JohnChow and lots more.

There will be more discussion on these topics in this blog in the future as well as on new and innovative e-commerce business model.

Visa Wave: Up to RM150 per transaction now

The capped limit of RM110 per transaction by the Visa Wave customers is now being revised to RM150 after the Bank Negara approval.


Launched in 2004, Visa Wave is a form of contactless payment that removes the need to physically swipe or insert a smart card into a payment reader. It is an EMV-based contactless payment credit card utilising radio frequency (RF) technology that allows payment to be conducted by simply "waving" it in front of a reader.

Faster transaction time of 2 seconds can be expected by using the Visa Wave. Currently, there are around 2500 merchants are using this facilities throughout Malaysia.

(Source: TheStar InTech 12th April 2007)


Some of the benefits of Visa Wave based on the survey conducted during the pilot study in Malaysia.
For Customers:

• Requires no signature and no card exchange at the point-of-sale
• Empowers cardholders with greater convenience, choice and flexibility in paying for goods and services
• Functions as a 3-in-1 card: Visa Wave can be used not only as a contactless card at places where the Visa Wave logo is displayed but also as a regular Visa card at more than 24 million acceptance locations and close to one million ATMs worldwide.
• 73 percent of cardholders prefer to use their Visa Wave card at key fast food chains

For Merchants:

• Provides greater speed of handling payment, allowing staff to attend to other customers more quickly
• By leveraging the industry-wide standard for smart cards, EMV, acts as a powerful tool against counterfeiting and fraud
• Enhances customers’ satisfaction with a modern, fast and convenient way to pay, leading to greater customer spend and loyalty
• 80 percent of merchants researched say that Visa Wave is a more secure payment than cash
• 70 percent of merchants commented that Visa Wave transactions are faster than other payment cards and speed up the process in store
• 80 percent of merchants find Visa Wave efficient and 95 percent would like to accept Visa Wave payments in the future.

For Financial Institutions:

• Enhances their offering to their customers – cardholders and merchants alike – with a new, fast, smart and convenient way to complete a transaction
• Grants access to new merchant categories – e.g. quick service restaurants and other ‘low ticket’ merchant segments
• Leverages the full benefits of EMV global smart card technology

Source: www.visa-asia.com

Malaysia is ranked 5th as spam zombies

Malaysia is ranked 5th among 29 countries in Asia Pacific region as a spam distributor. Philippines is ranked top, followed by Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Laos. This is the result from a survey conducted by Symantec Corp, a security solution vendor.

Malaysia also ranked 7th as the propagator of zombie machines, behind China, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam.


What is Spam?
The mass electronic distribution of unsolicited email to individual email accounts, email lists, Usenet groups advertising, promoting or performing any of the following actions:
a) The forwarding of email (chain letters)
b) The advertising or promotion of pornographic web sites
c) Advertising or promoting unsolicited web sites
d) The harassment of individuals or groups
e) The forgery of email headers of your email
f) The promotion of unsolicited business activities.
The survey also indicated that 96% of computers in Malaysia are zombie machine. These are PCs that have been compromised by hackers and used to launch spam e-mail, or phishing messages that lure computer users to mistakenly reveal personal information such as credit card details or bank account passwords.

An online banking account with a US$10,000 (RM35,000) balance is worth US$300 (RM1,100), for example. A verified PayPal account, meanwhile, would fetch between US$50 and US$500 (RM175 and RM1,750).

The causes for such high amount of zombie machines are the lack of awareness among the new broadband Internet users to safeguard their personal information and online identities plus the widespread use of pirated sofware which may contined trojans and other malicious code.

Solution:
Use the security solutions of the combination of antivirus, firewall and intrusion detection capabilities.


Source: TheStar InTech 10April 2007.

Latest: PM says NO plan to make it compulsory for bloggers registration

Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi responded to the previous issue of bloggers registration by stating that there will be no plan to make it compulsory for bloggers to register.

He said existing laws and regulations were adequate to take action against bloggers who crossed the limits. "Existing laws are sufficient to deal with them. The laws will be invoked when the need arises."

Source: Bernama.com 8th April 2007

Update: Bloggers Registration

Deputy Energy, Water and Communications Minister Datuk Shaziman Abu Mansor:
"The purpose of registering the bloggers is to COLLECT DATA rather than to CENSOR them."

He said the Government’s move should not be misconstrued as hindering bloggers from continuing with their activities. “The plan to register bloggers is merely to assess the situation and keep track on how many bloggers there are in the country and on the information provided by them. It has nothing to do with censoring the contents in the blogs."

The same exercise is being practiced by Singapore whereas some countries like China, Thailand and Middle East countries are practising censorship on blogging.

Malaysia: Registration for Bloggers in the future?

Malaysian Government is mulling on an idea of whether to ask locally hosted bloggers' websites to register with the authorities. This is another registration planned after the last year pre-paid mobile phone sunscription.

Reason:
To prevent the spread of negative or malicious content in the Internet. (Recently, there were cases of clashes of ideas and opinions between government ministers and bloggers.)

Reactions:
Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang, said the negative comments of several ministers about bloggers reflected their lack of understanding about information flow in cyberspace. "They should be educated on the vast benefits of blogging, which will help them to interact more with the people. Many politicians overseas already have their own blogs," he added.

Johor Baru MP Datuk Shahrir Abdul Samad said bloggers were very aware of their own ethics and responsibility for content on their sites.While agreeing that there were bloggers who had inflammatory content, he said unidentified bloggers could still be traced through their website addresses.He added that the problem was also about inflammatory comments by unidentified visitors to the blogs.

Ahirudin Attan of Rocky's Bru said the move to compel local bloggers to register was effectively the Government trying to control what Malaysians were writing online. "This violates the Government's no-censorship policy with regards to the Internet," he said. He added that the move would just create fear among the bloggers and would encourage them to host their blogs overseas.

Marina Mahathir, a blogger and activist, said the Government really should "get real." She said the move "is just going to make Malaysia look ridiculous in the eyes of the world."

Blogger Jeff Ooi wondered why the Government was pursuing this course of action. He said the Government had already set up the Content Forum to deliberate on complaints by any party.

The Star: Readers: Waste of time to register


Additional Links:
The Star: Bloggers may have to register
Sydney Morning Herald: Malaysian bloggers may have to reveal identities
The Age: Malaysian bloggers may have to reveal identities
IHT: Report: Malaysian minister proposes blogger registration to curb malicious content
ABC Radio: Proposal to register Malaysian bloggers