P1 looking for a strategic investor

The telco game is a money game. For you to be taken seriously in this industry, you need money and loads of it, bucket loads.

P1, was the first to market WiMAX in Malaysia but it appears that they’ve grown to big and too fast for their own good. And when that happens, you need money.

Word has it that P1 is currently looking for strategic investors to allow the telco to further expand both its WiMAX network coverage and subscriber base.

Business Times report that P1 has approached Korea’s largest telco, SK Telecom for the said injection of funds.

Both declined to comment on the report but it is said that a one fifth stake in P1 is worth about US$100m of investor’s money.

With Wizard, Michael Lai at the helm, P1 showed tremendous promise early last year with good performance and solid packages. One year into the business, it is now plagued by frequent network outages and what could possibly be one of the country’s most unreliable networks, P1 could very well put the funds to good use, if the investment does happen.

Many would like to see major improvements in network reliability and performance as well as an increase in coverage areas especially in buildings.

P1 may want to also look into introducing new devices into the market, specifically what we would like to call, bridge devices like Sprint’s Overdrive and Verizon’s MiFi.

For 2010, P1 targets to double its subscriber base and coverage areas. As of December 2009, P1 has crossed the 140,000 subscriber mark with coverage across 35% of Peninsular Malaysia.