Internet in Malaysia

Internet In Malaysia

The year 1995 was considered the beginning of the Internet age in Malaysia. The growth in the number of Internet hosts in Malaysia began around 1996. The country's first search engine and web portal company, Cari Internet, was also founded that year. According to the first Malaysian Internet survey conducted from October to November 1995 by MIMOS and Beta Interactive Services, one out of every thousand Malaysians had access to the Internet (20,000 Internet users out of a population of 20 million) (Beta Interactive Services, 1996). In 1998, this number grew to 2.6% of the population. The total number of computer units sold, which was 467,000 in 1998 and 701,000 in 2000 indicated an increasing growth (Lee, 2000c).

Malaysia was listed among the slowest countries in the world for loading Web pages on desktop computers as well as mobile computers, according to a 2012 report by Google. Malaysia, with an average Web page loading speed on desktops of 14.3 seconds, was named the world’s fifth slowest, even more plodding than the connection speeds of nations like Colombia, Argentina and Peru.

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission sets a low threshold for broadband. It defined broadband as:

• Any service beyond the scope of existing PSTN/ISDN and 2G cellular networks
• With data rates that exceed the normal voice-related speed (56 kbit/s for PSTN and 64 kbit/s for ISDN)

This definition is far below the primary rate interface lower limit defined by the International Telecommunications Union in ITU-R F.1399.