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Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Making sense of China’s Asia-Pacific FTA agenda


IN A surprise move, the Chinese government announced on April 30 that it will explore the possibility of pushing ahead the long-delayed Asia-Pacific Free Trade Agreement (FTAAP) in the coming Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) meeting this year. To that, Beijing is mulling a working group to study the feasibility of the Pacific-wide free trade pact which is scheduled to be discussed among Apec trade ministers in the May forum.

In light of Obama's conclusion of his Asia trip without much achievement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agenda, Beijing's latest move is a clear response to Washington's "economic containment" of China in the form of TPP—a suspicion that is shared by many analysts worldwide. Nevertheless, considering China's multi-level and often complicated decision-making process, Beijing's latest overture is definitely more than just a timely response. In fact, it is a strategic response aimed to achieve strategic goals in both external and internal dimensions.

First, Beijing's FTAAP move is a departure from Hu-Wen administration's policy on the Pacific trade agreement. Whereas the previous administration's stance on this matter is both ambiguous and non-committal, the current Xi-Li leadership has obviously abandoned such a policy to the point that it is willing to push the FTAAP agenda as Apec host this year. Exerting such a leadership when the credibility of Apec as the framework for achieving Asia-Pacific economic community is being questioned, is a show of China's aspiration for a global role that commensurate its position as one of the world's economic power.

Second, Beijing's support for the FTAAP is a strategic counter to the US-led TPP which China does not belong to. Instead of focusing its sights on the Asean-centred Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), Beijing is also looking at the FTAAP as its other tool to mitigate the adverse impacts arising from the TPP towards China, should the US-led trade pact successfully concluded. As FTAAP is the larger economic bloc that encompasses all 21 APEC members, pushing the proposal through will not just complement the TPP but also, absorb the 12-member TPP nations within the larger free trade bloc. This effectively puts China in the driving seat, seizing the global free trade initiative away from the US and breaking the TPP-induced predicament on Beijing.

Third, China's push for the FTAAP agenda will mean that the RCEP is firmly established as the other cornerstone of the nation's free trade policy. Simultaneously, such a decision will cast away any possibility of Beijing entering the TPP as some analysts have hope for.

From the statement made by the Chinese commerce ministry days ago, China is planning to utilise certain aspects of both the TPP and the RCEP frameworks, to be the building blocks for the eventual free trade pact in the Asia-Pacific region. By that, it means that the FTAAP, if it is successful, will not be the high quality FTA or Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) as the TPP, but rather, a modest version between the TPP and the RCEP. In the long-run, this is more beneficial to China as it puts the country in a gradual course of economic opening up unlike the situation in the TPP.

Finally, Beijing is employing the FTAAP as an external force to speed up reforms at the domestic front. With the FTAAP poised to be a higher quality of FTA vis-à-vis the China-Asean Free Trade Area, it is expected that substantial rules and regulations will be rolled out to overcome the numerous tariff and non-tariff barriers as well as investment hurdles among participating nations. For China, the FTAAP can be a force used by the government to break the monopolies of state-owned enterprises in the telecommunications, banking and transport sectors, just to quote a few. With economic reform being the most important agenda for the leadership, the Xi-Li administration is borrowing the external force in the form of FTAAP, to further liberalise its economy and, thus, spur China into a more sustainable economic development in the coming years.

What is needed by China, however, will be policy consistency and close collaboration with Washington to push the FTAAP agenda through. Just as half-baked efforts will not produce any tangible results as shown during the Bush administration, pushing through a FTAAP that is more accommodative to the developing world may not work as well in this case. Close lobbying with the US and other developed countries is vital if Beijing is to push through the FTAAP agenda in Apec.

- Contributed Karl Lee CROSS BORDERS theSunDaily

Karl Lee is an analyst at Anbound Malaysia, the leading independent think tank in Mainland China. Feedback: lcleong@anbound.com.

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Clean hands save lives, wash your hands to combat germs!

PETALING JAYA: The role of hand hygiene in preventing the spread of drug-resistant germs is the focus of the World Health Organisation’s annual “SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands” campaign this year.

Launched yesterday, the campaign is in line with WHO’s recently-released report on Antimicrobial Resistance: Global Report on Surveillance.

How bacteria become resistant
Bacteria grow resistant to antibiotics through natural selection. When drugs are used, some organisms may have ways of surviving. As they reproduce or pass DNA to other bacteria, those traits become more common, weakening antibiotics’ power.

The report states that there are increasingly more types of bacteria which cannot be killed by antibiotics. The report also stated that no one in the world is safe from this menace.

However, WHO also reported that should compliance with hand hygiene in health facilities increase from under 60% to 90%, there could be up to a 24% reduction in the infection of methicillin-resistant Stap­hylococcus aureus (MRSA).

MRSA, most commonly contracted in hospitals, is rapidly becoming more difficult to treat with current drugs.

“Whether it is the hands of the patient, their visitors or the healthcare team, people must remember to practise good hand hygiene in a healthcare setting, especially in hospitals,” said Patient Safety Council of Malaysia member Dr Milton Lum.

Good hand hygiene means washing the hands thoroughly with soap and water before and after touching a patient.

“Everyone has germs on his or her body so despite our good intentions in visiting our sick relatives or friends, we may actually pass on a bug unintentionally,” said Dr Lum.

Patients for Patients Safety Malaysia chairman J. Manvir said he believed that patients should also wear masks to protect themselves from airborne infections.

“Children under 12 should not be visiting patients, especially in hospitals.

“You may not be able to teach them to practise good hand hygiene but you can keep them at home to prevent them from passing on an infection to the patient as well as preventing them from getting ill,” said Manvir.

Antibiotic resistance has been around since the 1940s when the first antibiotic, penicillin, allowed doctors to kill off the many bacteria that were the source of different infections.

However, subsequent misuse of penicillin accelerated the natural evolution of the bacteria, resulting in the microbes becoming resistant.

Contributed by Tan Shiow Chin The Star/Asia News Network

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The world's leading health organization is sounding serious alarm bells about the problem of antibiotic resistance.

Monday, May 5, 2014

WHO's Alarm Bells: Antibiotic Resistance Now a 'Major Threat to Public Health'

The world's leading health organization is sounding serious alarm bells about the problem of antibiotic resistance.


In its first report on the issue ever, the World Health Organization (WHO) is sounding alarms about the issue of antibiotic resistance and the global public health threats it poses to our increasingly interconnected world.

"The problem is so serious that it threatens the achievements of modern medicine. A post-antibiotic era—in which common infections and minor injuries can kill—is a very real possibility for the 21st century," the report states.

Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria no longer die when treated with antibiotics. As a result, doctors have to use stronger, more potent antibiotics, and the more those are used, the more resistance bacteria develop to those as well. The WHO is warning that we're reaching a point in which the strongest antibiotics doctors have in their arsenal, the "treatment of last resort" drugs as they're called, no longer work.

And in fact, it's no longer just bacteria that are becoming resistant. The WHO has stopped referring to the problem as "antibiotic resistance" and now calls it "antimicrobial resistance," to encompass other organisms, such as viruses and parasites, that no longer respond to the drugs of choice. Namely, treating the viruses tuberculosis and HIV, and malaria (a parasite), has become harder as these diseases become resistant to medications. Even H1N1, the so-called "swine flu" that reached pandemic levels in 2009, has begun developing resistance to potent antiviral drugs.

Resistance Is a Worldwide Problem

One of the major points of the report is that diseases that used to be restricted to certain locales are now spreading internationally:

Among their key findings:
• Resistance to the treatment of last resort for life-threatening infections caused by a common intestinal bacteria, Klebsiella pneumonia—carbapenem antibiotics—has spread to all regions of the world. K. pneumoniae is a major cause of hospital-acquired infections such as pneumonia, bloodstream infections, infections in newborns and intensive-care unit patients. In some countries, because of resistance, carbapenem antibiotics would not work in more than half of people treated for K. pneumoniae infections.

• Treatment failure to the last resort of treatment for gonorrhea—third generation cephalosporins—has been confirmed in Austria, Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Norway, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden and the United Kingdom. More than 1 million people are infected with gonorrhoea around the world every day.

• People with MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) are estimated to be 64 percent more likely to die than people with a non-resistant form of the infection. MRSA, which can cause septic bloodstream infections when exposed to broken skin, is one of the most common "community-acquired" resistant infections, meaning you're likely to pick it up anywhere other people are—your gym, place of worship, a nearby park or even at schools. In the Americas, as many as 90 percent of staph infections are reported to be MRSA.

• There hasn't been a new class of antibiotics developed since the late 1980s.

We Can't Track What We Don't Know

The WHO is calling on countries all over the world to step up their surveillance of these deadly infections, something that happens rarely, if at all. An investigative report, "Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria," that ran on the PBS program Frontline in October 2013 revealed that public health officials in the U.S. have little to no data on the extent of antimicrobial resistance in this country. Healthcare facilities aren't required to report outbreaks, the report found, and many don't because they don't want to scare people or have to deal with bad PR.

“It is frankly embarrassing that we as a country do not know where resistance is occurring, how bad the problem is for various organisms or who’s using what antibiotics when,” Brad Spellberg, MD, an infectious disease doctor at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, said in the documentary.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that antimicrobial resistant infections hit two million people a year and kill at least 23,000. But the WHO notes that in most countries around the world, including the U.S., often only the most severe infections are documented and minor community-acquired infections (which can get passed along repeatedly and wind up as a severe infection) go unreported.

Clean Up the Food Supply!

For quite possibly the first time, the WHO also called out the food industry for its contribution to antimicrobial resistance. " The use of antibiotics in animal husbandry—including in livestock, poultry and fish farming—are leading to increasing recognition that urgent action is needed to avoid inappropriate use, and to reduce antibiotic usage in animal husbandry and aquaculture, as well as in humans," the report states. In the U.S., 80 percent of antibiotics sold go into animal feed to prevent infections in healthy animals or to speed growth. And we're not alone. "In many countries, the total amount of antibiotics used in animals (both food-producing and companion animals), measured as gross weight, exceeds the quantity used in the treatment of disease in humans," the authors found.

The same classes of antibiotics used on these animals are the same as those given to humans. In particular, fluoroquinolones, antibiotics used widely in the poultry industry, are increasingly ineffective against urinary tract infections caused by drug-resistant E. coli bacteria, which have been detected on all forms of supermarket meat, and against MRSA soft-tissue and skin infections.

Numerous groups in the U.S. have sued the Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approvals in animals for antibiotics that are valuable for humans. The agency's only response has been to set voluntary guidelines for the industry.

What You Can Do

Despite the damage factory farming has done to antibiotic effectiveness, the WHO and other public health officials insist that the first line of defense in controlling the problem of antimicrobial resistance is the healthcare setting: Stopping doctors from giving patients antibiotics for conditions they aren't designed to treat, for instance, when you're given antibiotics for a cold that's caused by a virus, not bacteria.

• Don't automatically ask for antibiotics when you feel sick and visit a doctor.

• If your doctor prescribes an antibiotic, ask if there's an alternative before just accepting the advice. Some doctors feel compelled to offer the drugs to make people feel better, but asking for an alternative can open up a dialogue about other options.

• When you do need an antibiotic, take the full course, even if you're feeling better.

• Wash your hands frequently to protect yourself from community-acquired infections, and keep your hands away from your nose, eyes and mouth, where infections can enter.

Contributed by  By EMILY MAIN

 Where Health Meets Life


Alarm bells over antibiotic resistance 

The World Health Organisation’s most comprehensive report to date sounds a warning that we are entering a world where antibiotics have little effect.

THE World Health Organisation (WHO) has sounded a warning that many types of disease-causing bacteria can no longer be treated with the usual antibiotics and the benefits of modern medicine are increasingly being eroded.

The comprehensive 232-page report on anti-microbial resistance with data from 114 countries shows how this threat is happening now in every region of the world and can affect anyone in any country.

Antibiotic resistance – when bacteria evolve so that antibiotics no longer work to treat infections – is described by the report as “a problem so serious that it threatens the achievements of modern medicine”.

“A post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries can kill, far from being an apocalyptic fantasy, is instead a very real possibility for the 21st century,” said Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director-general who coordinates its work on anti-microbial resistance.

“Without urgent, coordinated action, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill.

“Effective antibiotics have been one of the pillars allowing us to live longer, live healthier, and benefit from modern medicine.

“Unless we take significant actions to improve efforts to prevent infections and also change how we produce, prescribe and use antibiotics, the world will lose more and more of these global public health goods and the implications will be devastating.”

The report, “Antimicrobial Resistance: Global Report on Surveillance”, shows that resistance is occurring in many bacteria causing different infections.

It focuses on antibiotic resistance in seven bacteria responsible for common, serious diseases, such as bloodstream infections (sepsis), diarrhoea, pneumonia, urinary tract infections and gonorrhoea.

What is especially alarming is that the bacteria’s resistance has also breached “last resort” antibiotics, which are the most powerful medicines that doctors resort to when the usual ones do not work.

When patients do not respond to the usual medicines (known as first-line or first-generation medicines), doctors prescribe newer (second line medicines) which also usually also cost more.

When these also don’t work, newer and often more powerful (but sometimes with also more side effects) antibiotics are used, and they are even more expensive.

If these third-line or “last resort” medicines are not available or too costly for the patient, or if they don’t work on a patient because of antibiotic resistance, the patient remains ill or dies if the infection is a serious one.

New antibiotics have been discovered in the past to treat infections when the old ones became useless due to resistance.

But these discoveries dried up in the past 25 years.

The last completely new classes of anti-bacterial drugs were discovered in the 1980s.

Pathogens that are becoming increasingly resistant including to the more powerful antibiotics include E. coli, K. pneumonia, S. aureus, S. pneumonia, salmonelia, shigella and n. gonorrhoeae.

Key findings from the report include:

> Resistance to the treatment of last resort for life-threatening infections caused by a common intestinal bacteria, K. pneumonia — carbapenem antibiotics — has spread worldwide.

K. pneumoniae is a major cause of hospital-acquired infections such as pneumonia, bloodstream infections, infections in newborns and intensive-care unit patients.

In some countries, because of resistance, carbapenem antibiotics would not work in more than half of people treated for K. pneumoniae infections;

> Resistance to one of the most widely used antibacterial medicines for the treatment of urinary tract infections caused by E. coli – fluoroquinolones – is very widespread.

In the 1980s, when these drugs were first introduced, resistance was virtually zero.

In many countries today, this treatment is ineffective in more than half of patients;

> The sexually transmitted disease, gonorrhoea may soon be untreatable unless there are new drugs. Treatment failure to the last resort of treatment for gonorrhoea – third generation cephalosporins – has been confirmed in several countries; and

> Antibiotic resistance causes people to be sick for longer and increases the risk of death.

For example, people with MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) are estimated to be 64% more likely to die than people with a non-resistant form of the infection.

There are many cases of patients being infected by MRSA in hospitals.

The report also gives useful information on the worrisome building up of resistance in four serious diseases — tuberculosis, malaria, HIV and influenza.

A major factor accelerating resistance is in the animal husbandry sector, where there is a liberal use of antibiotics mainly to promote the growth of the animals used for food, for commercial purposes.

This builds up resistance in the bacteria present in the animals.

These resistant germs are passed on to humans who consume the meat.

The report has a small section on the animal-food chain, which has been identified as a major problem.

The European Union has banned the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in animals, but it is still allowed in other countries.

A WHO press release on the report calls for some actions. These include:

> Setting up basic systems in countries to track and monitor the problem;

> Preventing infections from happening in the first place to reduce the need for antibiotics;

> Only prescribing and dispensing antibiotics when they are truly needed, and prescribing and dispensing the right antibiotic(s) to treat the illness;

> Patients using antibiotics only when prescribed by a doctor and completing the full prescription; and

> Developing new diagnostics, antibiotics and other tools to stay ahead of emerging resistance.

Contributed by Global Trends by Martin Khor

Martin Khor is executive director of the South Centre, a research centre of 51 developing countries, based in Geneva. You can e-mail him at director@southcentre.org. The views expressed are entirely his own.

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Sunday, May 4, 2014

‘Panther 911’ : Digistar is bullish on new central monitoring system (CMS)

Digistar chairman Tan Sri Mohd Zaman Khan (left), Inspector -Gener al of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar and Lee during Pan ther 911’s official launching on April 25, 2014.

Information and communications technology (ICT) and property company Digistar Corp Bhd is bullish about the prospects of its newly-launched central monitoring system (CMS) called ‘Panther 911’.

Chief executive officer Datuk Wira Lee Wah Chong says the company targets 100,000 users for its hi-tech product in the first year.

A CMS is security-based system that includes aspects such as CCTV monitoring and alarms.

Digistar’s medium term goal is to secure a subscription base of 500,000 for its CMS in five years.

“The margins are good, about 20% to 30%. And this would be reflected from our current financial year (ending September 30, 2014) onwards,” he tells StarBizWeek.

“The first year may be slower than what we target but once our CMS gains visibility in the market, we expect a jump in take-up rate among business owners and individuals,” Lee says.

Digistar had spent RM5mil over the past two years to develop the CMS.

The company intends to use a multi-level marketing strategy to push the product into the market. “To incentivise the sales staff, they will get monthly a commission of 5% from the subscriptions they secure.”

In addition, the police force is also looking at the installation of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras at resorts and islands off Sabah’s east coast.

Last week, the police was reported to have asked Digistar to send them a proposal on installing the ‘Panther 911’ security system in Sabah.

The Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said to have the system linked directly to police stations would help security forces respond faster.

Khalid said the Eastern Sabah Security Command (Esscom) was planning to place security teams at 11 private resorts and islands that were the furthest away from Semporna and Lahad Datu. This was in light of recent killing and kidnapping events highlighted in the news.

If successful in this tie-up with the police, it would be Digistar’s first collaboration with the public sector for its CMS business. Right now, its target is on the mass market and commercial buildings.

Entering the Sabah market would not come as a surprise as Lee has always wanted to expand into Sabah and Sarawak.

That would be the second phase of Digistar’s security system business and the company estimates another RM5mil of investments for the expansion in the next two years. However, Lee notes that there needs to be better Internet connectivity in order for Internet-based surveillance systems to thrive in the country.

Digistar has a few competitors in the local CMS space.

But it seeks to differentiate itself by the attractive features of its system.

Digistar’s Panther 911 CMS system offers 24-hour monitoring services via an internet protocol-based platform. It can switch to run on 3G, 4G and LTE networks during power disruptions.

Banking on property sector

Lee says the company has plans to be among the top 100 companies in Malaysia in terms of market capitalisation in the next five years.

To do that, Lee says the company needs to further expand its property business. For Lee, property is Digistar’s next phase of growth as he opined that the growth trajectory for an ICT company has its boundaries.

“We are still focused on our ICT business but to achieve bigger goals, we will expand our property division,” he says. “We are looking for pockets of land around the Klang Valley now for small scale projects.”

Digistar already has a serviced apartment project in Malacca called The Heritage, with a gross development value of RM150mil. It is already 70% sold and is targeted to be opened this November.

Lee says the company intends to rent out the remaining 30% of apartments for recurring income.

“We plan to rent out like a hotel.

“The project will be a ‘condotel’, a combination of condominium and hotel,” he says.

Digistar is already speaking to hospitality partners to rope in for the management of the hotel component at The Heritage.

The company has also a 15-year concession for the construction and asset management of the Malaysian National Technology Advancement Centre in Alor Gajah, Malacca.

The project is a tie-up with the Works Ministry for the minstry to carry out training programmes for engineers and architects.

Its concession consists of RM174mil for the construction of facilities and infrastructure, and RM66mil for the provision of ICT and lab equipment.

Lee says the margins for this project would likely be in the double-digit range as well.

Digistar is also in talks to develop its telecommunications segment as it owns three individual licenses from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission to provide network and facilities services for five years.

Lee says discussions are on-going and declined to reveal any details.

All these efforts, says Lee, are aimed at steering the company back into profitability.

For the 2013 financial year (FY13), Digistar made a net loss of RM11mil compared to a profit of RM6mil in FY12.

The company had said that the loss was due to a higher operating cost, commencement of projects where revenue was yet to be recognised as well as the business expansion for its CMS and telecommunications divisions. Lee reckons that Digistar’s CMS as well as other initivatives would help turnaround the company and generate long-term recurring income.


Internet Speed in Asia, Telekom Malaysia Not so broadband but a chore !

 Malaysia's Speed is slower than Vietnam and Cambodia

Slow and costly: An internet user waiting for a page to load.

PETALING JAYA: Malaysians may be one of the most globally-connected people but it’s not necessarily at a speed they want.

According to a new global survey, the average broadband speed in Malaysia is slower than Vietnam and Cambodia in the region, and barely ahead of Myanmar.

Almost three times slower than Vietnam, Malaysia at 5.48 Megabits per second (Mbps) was ranked a low 126 out of 192 countries surveyed from May 2013 to April this year in the recent Net Index.

Zooming to the number one spot was Hong Kong with a speed of 78.3 Mbps. Singapore sped to second placing at 66.6 Mbps while South Korea was ranked fourth (53.77Mbps), the United Kingdom 23rd (26.85Mbps) and the United States, 32nd (23.9Mbps).

The survey was conducted by Ookla – a global broadband testing and web-based network diagnostic applications company that compares the download, upload and line quality of broadband connections.

Commenting on the survey results, Federation of Malaysian Manu­facturers (FMM)’s ICT and multimedia committee chairman Dr Neoh Vee Heng said its 2,678 members were generally concerned about the country’s slow Internet speed, the unavailability of wireless and fibre connections, and the high cost of connectivity.

“One member who is investing in a big project in Sepang is very worried about the slow 1Mbps broadband speed in that area.

“More and more FMM members are becoming heavily dependent on the Internet for their global business communications and transactions. Unfortunately, connectivity in Ma­­laysia is slow and costly compared with our neighbouring countries,” he said, adding that it was important for businesses to have fast Internet connectivity at a reasonable cost.

The FMM would meet with the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to discuss how broadband services could be improved and its cost reduced, he said.

Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations (Fomca) secretary-general Datuk Paul Selvaraj said slow Internet connection was among the top grouses of consumers.

“Consumers sign up for pricey packages expecting fast, stable connectivity but on most occasions, the telco companies fail to deliver. Despite having highlighted the problem many times before, the telco companies have failed to respond,” he said.

He urged the MCMC to act on telco companies that did not keep their promises because of a clause that says “the speed is not guaranteed due of various factors”.

“It is the telcos’ responsibility to ensure that all the necessary infrastructure is in place before they go around promising speedy Internet connectivity,” he said.

Symantec Malaysia systems engineering director Nigel Tan said the Government had announced an allocation of RM1.8bil under Budget 2014 for the second phase of the High-Speed Broadband (HSBB) project to increase the speed and extend the access areas in the urban, suburban and rural areas.

“This is a key initiative in making access to information easier as the nation moves into an information-driven economy.

“The need for speed correlates with how a huge part of our lives are conducted online – from sending e-mails and e-banking to watching videos and video-chatting.

“Our increasingly digital lifestyle consumes vast volumes of bandwidth,” he said.

He, however, warned that the grass may not be greener on the other side as cybercriminals tend to target computers that were connected to high-speed broadband Internet.

Netizens: Viewing rich content files a chore 

PETALING JAYA: Internet speed in the country is still lagging and varies according to locations, according to netizens here.

IT executive T.Y. Teoh, 29, said the country’s current Internet speed was all right for light browsing of news portals but “absolutely unacceptable” for viewing multimedia-rich content or downloading movie and audio files.

“Even watching a short clip on YouTube is frustrating because it keeps buffering,” he complains. His 3G package is supposed to be for speeds of between five and 10Mbps, but he usually only surfs at the speed of two to 3Mbps.

“For more than RM100 monthly, I feel shortchanged.”

He said 4G connectivity was no better because at different locations, the speed varied vastly.

Citing an example, he said in Petaling Jaya, the speed was usually 50Mbps but in Penang, it was only 20Mbps.

“It is the same telco provider, yet there is a big 30Mbps difference. Why?” he asked.

Bank staff P. John Eric, 38, who is “always online”, said free public hot spots and 4G data plans were still unreliable and unstable.

“In other countries, you get the speed that is advertised – usable hotspots and decent speeds.

“Here, it is all hype,” he said.

Source: by Christina Chin The Star/Asia News Network

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