CELCOM OFFERS FREE INTERNET DURING WEEKENDS

KUALA LUMPUR: Competition among telecommunication service providers has been raised a notch with Celcom Axiata Bhd’s (Celcom) launch of FiRST Blue and FiRST Gold postpaid plans, which are the only postpaid plans in the country that is offering free Internet during the weekends.

The FiRST Blue and FiRST Gold have been significantly boosted with features providing greater Internet usage.

“I think we have to make sure we are competitive to keep up with the competitive pressure, which is getting more intense in the last two years. So since early June, after stablising our IT infrastructure upgrade, we really stepped up by launching our new products and services.

“This is the first big postpaid product that we have launched since our IT infrastructure uprade as we wanted to make sure that this is the greatest plan and the timing is appropriate to close off the year on a high.

“Usually at the end of the year, there is quite a high spending trend among Malaysian consumers,” said Celcom Axiata Bhd chief marketing and sales officer Zalman Aefendy Zainal Abidin.

Since the launch of the FiRST One postpaid plan in conjunction with Merdeka, Celcom has achieved an additional 50% postpaid volume compared with the volume in the first quarter of this year.

The wholly-owned unit of Axiata Bhd hopes to double postpaid activation with the new plans.

Meanwhile, the company said its 4G LTE roll up for the year is on track, with more than 50% coverage in populated areas.

On another note, Zalman said the company had its own standards when asked to comment on Maxis Bhd’s chief technical officer Morten Bangsgaard challenge to other telco operators to back up their claims that their 4G services have the widest, fastest and best network.

“We don’t need anyone else to ask us to acknowledge or whatever, we have our own sets of standards which are high enough. We also use third party tools and rely a lot on external standards, because the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission has very clear definitions on coverage and quality.”