3G Video Interconnection for Malaysia
Malaysia's Celcom and Maxis have launched 3G interconnection, enabling interconnect video telephony. By opening access between the two major 3G networks, the 3G user community in Malaysia immediately increased twofold, allowing Celcom's and Maxis' users to make and receive video calls, and send and retrieve video messages among themselves.
"Through this collaboration, we aim to enhance the potential of interactive 3G services and spread the excitement of video telephony to more people in Malaysia. Interconnectivity is crucial and is the key factor is the thrust for widespread adoption of 3G and video telephony," said Celcom's Chief Executive Officer Dato' Shazalli Ramly.
Both service providers are confident that interconnection will boost take-up and usage of 3G video telephony and video messaging services, as how interconnection did to SMS and to an extent MMS. After interconnection for SMS was established in 2001, usage of text messages almost doubled from 3.6 billion SMS sent in the following year to 6.2 billion SMS sent in 2003.
"Similar to SMS, we believe interconnection plays a key role in unlocking eventual critical mass in 3G usage. We have seen a huge culture change in the way people choose to communicate - we believe the visual message through video can be as popular and powerful as voice and text in the near future," said Maxis' Chief Executive Officer Dato' Jamaludin Ibrahim.
The Celcom-Maxis 3G interconnection was launched after a series of performance tests since end of last year in making sure that the service works.
According to The Mobile World figures, Maxis ended last year with just over 7.8 million customers, while Celcom ended with just over 6.8 million customers. Celcom also breakdown their subscriber base, revealing that Celcom ended the year with 52,000 3G customers."
Posted to the site on 17th April 2006
