BSN signs 5-year deal with TM

Done deal: Zamzamzairani (second from right) shaking hands with Adinan at the signing ceremony in Menara KL.

KUALA LUMPUR: Bank Simpanan Nasional has signed a five-year deal with Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) to further improve the bank’s current operational efficiencies and to boost its customer base, where it currently serves 10 million people nationwide.

The agreement is for the new Converged Network Transfor-mation Project, in which TM will be delivering Wide Area Network (WAN) services connecting 413 BSN branches nationwide.

Besides the WAN services, TM will also support BSN by delivering high definition quality videos which enable meetings via video conference between BSN headquarters and its branches to be conducted more efficiently.

TM chief executive officer Tan Sri Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa said the services provided by TM would allow BSN to focus more on its core business and that the project was expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2016, with 40% already done.

However both parties declined to disclose the value of the agreement.

“We don’t normally share the value because we don’t want competitors to know,” he said during a press conference yesterday.

BSN chief executive officer Datuk Adinan Maning said the bank hoped to extend the contract for another five years with TM after the five-year agreement ended.

“On future collaborations, we’re not too sure right now but there is nothing in the pipeline other than with TM currently,” he added.

On the high-speed broadband phase two project (HSBB2), Zamzamzairani said the decision on the final details of the RM1.8bil project would be made known in the next couple of months.

“Negotiations with the Government on the broadband service has been completed. Basically we’re now waiting for the Government to come back to us,” he said.

The second phase of the project would extend broadband service to cities and major towns. Similar to the first phase, the second phase is a joint venture between TM and the Government. The second phase would extend the coverage of the company’s UniFi broadband service.

The objective of the project is to build 1,000 new telecommunication towers and lay undersea cables. The 11MP indicated that HSBB2 will cover all state capitals and selected high-impact growth areas, with 250,000 ports across 410,000 premises by end-2016. TM had in February this year received the job from the Government for the HSBB 2, along with the Sub-Urban Broadband projects.