Maxis to make big impact on SLT

Surekha GALAGODA reporting from Malaysia

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CEO Maxis Communications Berhard Malaysia Sandip Das told a group of journalists from Sri Lanka in Malaysia last week that Sri Lanka still has a lot more potential to expand in the sphere of telecommunications and he was confident that the biggest impact will be felt in the mobile arm of SLT where Maxis has the experience and the expertise.

He said, “with our knowledge and expertise the company will be able to formulate new strategies and at present we together with our partner are baking the strategies which we are going to implement.”

Das said that SLT is quite happy to get the knowledge and expertise from us. We will work with the partner and give our expertise so that we could give a better service to SLT customers. He said that Maxis wants to establish a regional footprint.

At present our hands are a bit full with India, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka but we are open for discussion and we will evaluate opportunities that come our way.

The board of Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) will be appointed once the mandatory offer expires on June 2 and we have held discussions with NTT officials from 2004 to purchase the 35.9% stake of SLT, said an official of Maxis Communications.

He said, “We want to establish a regional footprint” and this is the reason for us to be interested in SLT. Maxis Telecom, by far the largest in the Usaha Tegas Group was launched in Malaysia in 1995, Indonesia 2005, India 2006 and became a strategic partner of Saudi Telecom by acquiring 25 per cent in 2007.

At present we have 10 million subscribers in Malaysia and 11 million in India. The group revenue is US$ 2.8 bn with Malaysia contributing 82 per cent while the balance is contributed by India.

The group operates in three markets - Malaysia, India and Indonesia serving over 20 mln customers while plans are afoot to increase it to 30 mln by the end of the year.” If all goes well 30mln would be a conservative target, said Das.

Maxis was granted communications licences to operate a nationwide GSM900 mobile network, a domestic fixed network and an international gateway in 1993 and commenced mobile telecommunications operations in 1995 while fixed line and international operations commenced in 1996. Maxis launched 3G services in July 2005.

In September 2006 Maxis became the world’s first mobile operator to roll out HSDPA (a high speed upgrade of the 3G network) for residential wireless broadband services.

T. Ananda Krishnan, the second richest person in Malaysia with a networth of US$ 4 bln controls the company.

The company was named as the Malaysian service provider of the Year 2008.