KUCHING: Telekom Malaysia Bhd (Telekom) is expected to gain more from its non-voice business compared with its voice business.AmResearch Sdn Bhd (AmResearch) said in its research report that the non-voice business was growing at a pace of more than 10 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y) while the voice business was in decline.
In absolute number terms, the voice revenue had declined 6.5 per cent in the past three years while in terms of contribution, it had dipped below 50 per cent as at 2009.
Revenue attributable to voice business had declined following a reduction in average revenue per user (ARPU) resulting in from a lower subscriber base as well as lower usage.
Subscriber base that had declined about one per cent y-o-y, pushed by the residential segment of its customer base, saw ARPU steadily on the downtrend, slashing about RM2 per year.
On the other hand, the research house reported that it had imputed Unifi broadband project launch timeline into its model and it was in line with guidance by management since the second quarter of 2009.
The first phase of the Unifi project that was awarded to Telekom in late 2008 was to be delivered by 2011 at an initial investment of RM4.8 billion.
For the first part of the project 2008-2011, the government would jointly bear the cost of RM2.4 billion with Telekom.
According to reports, residences in Subang Jaya, Bangsar, and Taman Tun Dr Ismail presently have access to Unifi’s broadband service with speed of up to 100 Megabyte per second with businesses having access of up to 1 Gigabyte per second.
Other areas within the peninsular, in particular high-impact areas were scheduled to have access by the end of the year. Telekom was aiming to achieve the promised one million premises by the end 2011.
AmResearch said that the launch changed the landscape significantly since the bandwidth of Unifi allowed for greater amount of traffic within the fibre optic cables.
Telekom has greater manoeuvrability in terms of products offering, especially in the content selling business and was actively seeking new business opportunities in order to diversify from riding on rental of its facilities.
According to 2010 estimates, the research house had imputed 100,000 subscribers base case scenario – by year-end. Furthermore, it had assumed an ARPU of RM115 per subscriber during the period.
During the launch, it gathered that the entry price (speed of up to 5 Megabyte per second) would be RM149.
Although this came higher than expected, the research house left its numbers intact since the impact would be minimal at less than one per cent for this year.
Furthermore, it had been very bullish on the take up rate of the service and essentially it was looking at an upgrading rate (from Streamyx to Unifi) of 6.7 per cent. As a result, Telekom was valued at RM3.20 per share.