More, better communication towers in Sabah to improve service

KUALA LUMPUR: Deputy Communications and Multimedia Minister, Eddin Syazlee Shith said various initiatives are being actively implemented by the government to improve communication services in Sabah under the Cellular Coverage Expansion and Mobile Broadband initiative.

He said the initiative involved the construction of new communication towers and upgrading of existing communication towers.

“A total of 355 new communication towers in Sabah have began operation while 37 more towers are still being implemented. This is in addition to 1,718 communication transmitter structures provided commercially in Sabah by leading telecommunications companies.

“From the total, 96 such structures are located in Kota Kinabalu,” he said when replying to a question by Senator Datuk Theodore Douglas Lind during question and answer session at Dewan Negara yesterday.

Apart from that, he said 1,092 existing location towers had been upgraded in Sabah to provide coverage of services of up to 4G while another 129 towers are in the process of upgrading and are expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2019.

He said from the total, 43 tower locations had been upgraded in Kota Kinabalu.

“Through the High-Speed BroadBand (HSBB) project to provide high speed broadband facilities to the state capital, leading towns and high impact economic areas throughout the country including Sabah.

Almost 100,000 connections have also been provided involving upgrading 10 exchanges in Sabah and one in Kota Kinabalu,” he said

He said the government was also implementing the Sub-Urban Broadband (SUBB) and the Rural Broadband (RBB) projects to provide broadband service with speed up to 20Mbps in sub-urban and rural areas where there were 40,000 existing connection via 40 fixed line exchanges in Sabah,” he said. - Bernama