Celcom says they have made significant investments of over RM1.8 billion in the past 3 years to improve its network services and to cater for the rapid increase in data traffic. While it has posted strong Q3 2022 financial results with increased revenue driven by prepaid and Enterprise subsidiaries, Celcom said it has made the necessary upgrades and enhancements with the aim to be a reliable service provider that delivers consistent network performance to its customers.
According to Celcom, data traffic on its network has increased by 73% to 1.778TB compared to 1.025TB three years ago. Meanwhile, average monthly data consumption per user has increased by 75% to 26.2GB in Q3 2022 compared to 14.9GB in Q1 2020. It added that the data utilisation trend is stabilising with a slight increase of 5.1% compared to the previous quarter.
In terms of coverage, Celcom says it has the widest 4G and 4G LTE-A population coverage at 96.35% and 90.29% respectively. With the investments made to increase coverage in line with JENDELA, Celcom says they have over 97% 4G LTE population coverage in more than 10 states and 3 Federal Territories in Malaysia. In Sabah, Sarawak and Pahang, Celcom has upgraded more than 4,400 sites with new capacities, coverage enhancements and optimisation.
In order to provide a consistent network performance, Celcom has increased fiberisation by upgrading more than 7,000 sites and expanding more than 2,000km of fibre nationwide. They have also increased their network core capacity to 3.3Tbps from 0.8Tbps which also includes core networks in Sabah and Sarawak.
Commenting on the overall performance, Celcom CEO Datuk Idham Nawawi said “Our products and services remain affordable to our customers, especially with our Unlimited Prepaid plans, despite the significant increase in data utilisation. Our network experience has also been resilient: we have added over 1 million new subscribers, improved average download speeds by 49%, and significantly reduced customer complaints as well as network outage incidents. Our transformation allows us to be more effective in deploying our network CAPEX and network operational cost that has improved by 28%, resulting in savings of RM733 million.”
Idham added “Our transformation journey has made our organisation much stronger, leaner, and resilient and we enter the merger with Digi with a positive momentum. We look forward for the merged company to continue delivering quality and affordable services, connecting more Malaysians nationwide.”
The Celcom-Digi merger is almost complete as shareholders of both companies (Axiata and Digi) have given their approval during an EGM. This comes after the merger proposal received the green light from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), the Securities Commission (SC) and Bursa.
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