KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 1 — The Ministry of Communications and Multimedia (KKMM) places a high priority in ensuring that the country’s infrastructure readiness is at the forefront among regional countries so that Malaysia can take advantage of the global digital economy.
Minister Tan Sri Annuar Musa said the country should have extensive infrastructure facilities in terms of connectivity and high quality internet coverage to enable the development of the digital economy.
“Therefore, our priority now is to reach 97 per cent of the fourth generation (4G) network coverage nationwide and at the same time we want to roll-out the fifth generation (5G) network coverage.
“5G is ten to a hundred times faster than 4G. Various activities can be done such as doing surgery and driving a car virtually without physical presence,” he said in the ‘Bersama Annuar’ programme on Bernama’s Twitter Spaces which discussed the topic of ‘Pendigitalan Ekonomi – Apa Yang Rakyat Dapat?’ (Digitalisation of the Economy – What’s in it for the people?) tonight.
Meanwhile, he said KKMM would transform the Community Internet Centres and Rural Internet Centres nationwide into Malaysian Family Digital Centres to encourage people at the grassroots level to become participants in the development of the digital economy.
Elaborating further, Annuar said the transformation involving almost 1,000 centres in each parliamentary constituency, state constituency and district would begin this month.
“At these centres, we will hold training programmes, give exposure on how they can package their products, how they can access the markets or platforms to market their products while participating in this digital economy,” he said.
Annuar said efforts to provide digital economy opportunities would be carried out simultaneously and it could support the target of 25.5 per cent digital economy contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) by 2025 under the 12th Malaysia Plan (12MP).
