Sabah fully digital by 2025
Published on: Wednesday, February 05, 2020
By: Neil Chan
KOTA KINABALU: State Education and Innovation Minister Datuk Dr Yusof Yacob expects Sabah to be fully digitalised by 2025, thanks to the National Fiberisation and Connectivity Plan (NFCP) project launched last year.
“With a RM21 billion allocation for the NFCP (2019-2023), we hope that a large part of this can be given to Sabah as we are left behind in terms of such infrastructures.
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“Thus, with this, we want Sabah to be fully digitalised by 2025 where it will be utilised in many sectors such as tourism, education, health, government agencies and the development of a smart city. All this requires a good digital infrastructure.
Yusof said his ministry also welcomed the NFCP which was launched in September last year by Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail with an allocation cost of RM21.6 billion nationwide, especially Sabah and Sarawak which still have low telecommunication and broadband coverage. Thus, by 2024, Sabah should enjoy broadband speed of at least 30Mbps.
It is hoped that in the near future Sabah would also enjoy 5G coverage with the demonstration project launched by the Prime Minister recently.
He said this to the media after officiating the closing of the two-day Sabah Digital Infrastructure Lab workshop at a hotel, here, Tuesday.
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Yusof said the good response for the workshop shows that many are interested to solve the problem.
“The current internet speed that the State has is somewhat slow, and if we were to bring this (digital infrastructure) about, then it would be better connectivity and eventually Sabah will be digital state by 2025.”
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On the workshop, he said it was organised to bring together ICT players from various sectors and government agencies, telcos, associations and NGO ICT community for them to discussion on new ideas, technology, challenges and hurdles faced towards a new Sabah ICT Blueprint to make Sabah fully digitalised by 2025.
He said the State Cabinet decided that Sabah needs a digital technology infrastructure central committee to oversee Sabah’s infradigital technology needs.
“Before this, there was no masterplan on the direction of digital development in the State. As such my ministry have been tasked to look into this.
“We have been tasked to solve the problem of coordination for the infrastructure providers, telco players and stakeholders. This is the government’s new direction towards providing this digital infrastructure to attract investors to Sabah.
He said one of the key requirements of investment/investors nowadays is the existence of digital infrastructure. “If we don’t provide this then we will be left behind. As such, we need to coordinate who is the infrastructure provider, who is the consumer and who are the other stakeholders. We want the understanding of all the players so there won’t be confusion.
“God willing, we have done this and this workshop is a start for us to discuss and understand our respective roles where we hope there will be a formula that would be in line with the nation’s needs.
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