YTL Communications, the folks behind Yes 4G and 1Bestarinet today has released a statement regarding the recent termination of contract by the Ministry of Education (MoE). In general, this particular statement provides its side of the story and claimed that the ministry has breached its contractual obligations.
Not only that, YTL Communications also claimed that MoE has apparently said that the Government has no budget to deliver Internet services at schools and asked the company to provide them for free. Despite YTL Communications’ willingness to do so, MoE still ended up choosing to pay TM, Celcom, and Maxis as its interim ISPs.
The statement from YTL is quite long-winded, hence it is much easier to see its contents through a chronological manner:
July 2018: MoE announced that a new tender for ISPs will be opened in early 2019.
YTL Communications pointed out in today’s statement that MoE at that time has confirmed that the company will not be excluded from the new tender.
23 April 2019: MoE meets up with ISPs including YTL Communications, TM, Celcom, Maxis and few other companies that were not mentioned in the statement.
YTL Communications claimed that during this meeting MoE has stated that it is not ready to call for a tender at the moment and expects that it only able to do so after 6 months.
Consecutively, MoE has requested for YTL Communication to continue providing Internet to schools for free during the interim period until the ministry has completed its tender process.
31 May 2019: YTL Communications submitted a letter to MoE in which the company has agree to provide Internet services and access to Frog VLE for free during the interim period. No response was received from MoE.
A copy of letter was published by YTL on its corporate website [PDF].
27 June 2019:MoE announced that it has chosen TM, Celcom, and Maxis as the interim ISPs and is moving away from Frog VLE to Google Classroom starting on 1 July 2019. The ministry also stated that it is currently in the look for new long-term ISP to serve schools throughout Malaysia starting from 1 January 2020.
According to YTL Communications, this announcement was done without its knowledge. Additionally, the company also claimed that the Government has to pay the three chosen ISPs for Internet services even though YTL Communications already agree to provide for free.
Given the strong claims that YTL Communications has laid down in its statement, it seems that the company is ready to face MoE aggresively regarding the whole 1Bestarinet situation. While it still depends on how MoE will react to this, it is likely that we are going to be in one heck of a ride.
(Source: YTL Corporation Berhad.)
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