TNB receives proposals to facilitate NFP

KUALA LUMPUR: Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) has received proposals from several third parties who are keen to participate and help facilitate the Nationwide Fiberisation Plan (NFP) after teaming up with Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) on the project.

TNB President/Chief Executive Officer Datuk Seri Azman Mohd said the company was open to any third parties who could add value to the broadband fiberisation network, especially those with infrastructure.

“The infrastructure should not be owned or developed by so many people because it is going to be duplicative, and will not contribute to a better pricing or doubling the speed requirement for broadband penetration in Malaysia.

“I think it’s logical to explore an option where infrastructure players would be actually devising a way to make it accessible to the public,” he told reporters after the soft launch of the Conference of the Electric Power Supply Industry (CEPSI) 2018 yesterday.

On Tuesday, TNB and TM inked a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop an implementation plan to deliver the government’s NFP.

The development followed government’s appointment of Broadnet to undertake the NFP project to provide highspeed broadband services to all households with a RM1.5 billion incentive provided by the government.

Azman said it is logical to partner with a firm that has the necessary infrastructure.

“The owners of the high-speed fibre infrastructure in Malaysia are TNB and TM. If you want to make it a success, we have to get these infrastructure combined together so they can allow open access to the people,” he added.