Internet Bandwidth Consumption More Than Doubles in First Six Months of Year 2014

November 17, 2014 (Mon): Malaysian Internet Exchange (MyIX) or also known as Persatuan Pengendali Internet Malaysia’ an initiative under the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), has released the official Internet bandwidth exchanged in Malaysia, covering the first six months of 2014.

MyIX Chairman, Chiew Kok Hin1bMyIX Chairman, Chiew Kok Hin says, “For the first six months period of 2014, the aggregated Internet bandwidth consumption in Malaysia increased by 105 percent to a total amount of 306,970 Mbps.”

“In comparison, the total 12 months Internet bandwidth consumption in 2013 stood at 349,277 Mbps.

Whereas, you can see that in just the first six months of 2014, Malaysia’s Internet bandwidth consumption is already almost the entire amount of the year before. This shows how much more Internet data and content traffic is being utilised by both the local commercial and residential markets.”

Drilling down deeper into MyIX’s report, Chiew highlights the month of June 2014 – whereby the nations Internet bandwidth consumption stood at 61,771 Mbps, as compared to just 26,032 Mbps in June 2013; marking the June 2014 as the month of the highest Internet bandwidth consumption in Malaysia.

In a related report, IDC Research revealed that mobile penetration rate in Malaysia has also exceeded 140 per cent, and attributes one of the factors of this increase of smartphone users in the country to an effort under the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) known as the Youth Communication Package (YCP) – that was rolled out in 2012.

Chiew adds, “The increase in smartphone users, together with the huge advent of social media has played a big role in the dramatic increase of Internet bandwidth consumption in Malaysia over the last two years.

As technology gets more advanced, we are seeing more and more content rich sites which have emerged, that requires higher broadband capacities to carry across the type of bandwidth-hungry applications to the consumer. This factor alone is another reason why MyIX sees that Internet bandwidth across the country will continue to increase,” he adds.

Chiew adds that e-commerce is the other contributing factor to the increase of Internet consumption by Malaysians.

“We are seeing an increasing number of Malaysians making purchases online in both local and international sites. At the same time, most businesses already have some form of online presence and are conducting transactions in voluminous daily amounts.

The country’s domestic market demands are also attracting foreign e-commerce traffic as they vie for the increasing appetite for online purchases amongst Malaysians,” he explains.

MyIX’s International Peering Partners

In terms of MyIX’s peering partners, Chiew shares that; Hutchison Global Communications Limited, Swiftserve Pte Ltd and Telstra Malaysia Sdn Bhd have recently signed on to be connected, or ‘peer’ locally with the Malaysian Internet Exchange.

Already, sites such as Google, Facebook, Akamai, Amazon, Microsoft and Twitter are already peered to MyIX.

MyIX continuously monitors local traffic bandwidth consumption patterns to identify select international sites that are frequented by Malaysians, and then invites these sites to peer at MyIX so that the site can load faster for local users located in the country.

“Internet service providers and Internet content providers based both in Malaysia and internationally are welcome to join MyIX to peer with Malaysia’s Internet exchange – in order to enjoy the benefit of connecting in a more efficient and economical manner to Internet users in Malaysia,” ends Chiew.

Author: Terry KS

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