Synopsis
The changing landscape of the Malaysian mobile market has over time witnessed the restructuring of the main players in that market. The government has been a strong supporter of the rationalisation of what had been seen as an overcrowded market. A particularly significant merger between Telekom and Celcom took place, creating a lot of interest. At the same time, but with less fanfare, Maxis acquired Time dotCom’s mobile unit. These changes resulted in the number of operators being effectively reduced from five to three. The allocation of 3G licences has also been controversial with one of the operators initially missing out then picking up one in a surprising fashion. By December 2008 Maxis Communications had a mobile subscriber base of 11.1 million, with Celcom in second place on 8.8 million, while DiGi was number three with 7.1 million subscribers. New operator, with its exclusively 3G offering, was trailing the field with just 200,000 subscribers at the time. This report looks at the mobile operators in the Malaysian market.