Saturday, March 29, 2014

Telekom-Green Packet: The weird world of Malaysian telcos

Remember years ago when Telekom Malaysia (TM) had TM Touch? They were going nowhere and for TM to have a significant mobile business and successful one, the forced (sort of) purchase was planned. After the purchase of Celcom from Tajuddin Ramli, years later it was split again, presumably for Celcom and its mobile business to have a solid Asian strategy, hence Axiata.

TM on the other hand, was given a lot of handouts in the form of financial assistance for its fiber broadband rollout - to the tune of multi billions. With that handout, few would think that TM can fail. In fact when Celcom and other mobile businesses were split from TM, these mobile group was structured to owe TM something like RM4 billion, another assistance to TM.

TM should not and cannot fail, just like MAS. The difference between MAS and TM is that MAS is fighting globally competitive players. TM is given a headstart in any of the competition it goes into, something like standing on the 50 meters mark in a 100m race while the rest will have to start from the beginning.

Who will think TM will succeed in the mobile data business acquiring Green Packet? I don't.

In a standing start against players like Maxis, Celcom, Digi - it will pretty much lose, what more coming from behind although it has the backbone of fiber optics - something that the others lose out to TM.

In a business of telco, it is not just the infra. Tell that to Digi, which does lose out in infra - even for the LTE spectrum and it did not even have the 3G spectrum earlier - forced to a deal with Time Dotcom.

This deal does not help anybody but to postpone the demise of Green Packet while another player whom are not able turnaround anybody is thinking that it can. SK Telekom's name is just a convenient partner to bring the story line sounds better. After all, it has been with Green Packet for many years and nothing really happened.

8 comments:

Black Ink said...

Don't mean to nitpick but TM is acquiring a stake in Packet One (P1) not Green Packet - P1 is the broadband business that Green Packet had a 57% stake in.

felicity said...

Hi Black Ink.

I do get that. Hoever, there is no other significant businesses for Green Packet, besides Packet One. It was structured that way.

I understand that the deal is a bond deal, which allows conversion into shares later on.

In any way, this article is about TM getting into mobile broadband.

panaceaasia said...

Broadband spectrum is auctioned off in developed countries rather than given away.

The auction of spectrum usually raise billion of dollars.

Why can't the Malaysian government legitimately raise funds for the nation in this manner?

AdCool said...

panaceaasia, you are asking a question which all of us already know the answer. It's just like why can't we have open tender but direct award?

Jun said...

Hi Felicity,

What's your view on Jobstreet at the moment? It closed at 2.40.

felicity said...

There should not be any different unless the deal is called off. Down probably because Fidelity selling. I do not know the reason. Could be internal...

Bn911 said...

Hi Felicity, will u buy more jobstreet share at current price? Thnaks.

felicity said...

Sure