KUCHING: The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) Sarawak Region is targeting to set up a total of 600 Internet hotspots using satellite service, mainly in rural areas, throughout the state next year.

Its director Ahmad Nor Hisham Mod Yusop said with the increased number of Internet hotspots it is hoped that more people, especially students in rural places and villagers, will have Internet access, saying currently 205 hotspots are now available in rural places.

He also acknowledged that students who received the 1Malaysia netbooks could use the Internet access in the hotspots and community broadband service centres as well as broadband libraries in their villages.

“We have given away 14,500 netbooks during the Phase 1 last year, and in the second phase this year, we gave away 60,268 netbooks to eligible students and public. We still have 2,000 more netbooks to be given away.

“End of this year and beginning of next year, we are giving another 107,400 netbooks to eligible students and public.

“With this, we hope to increase the number of Internet users. This definitely will also increase the number of social media users,” he said when presenting a talk on ‘Social Media — A platform for rumour mongering?’ at the Angkatan Zaman Mansang Sarawak (Azam) seminar on ‘Social Media and Society: Promoting Responsible Netizenship’ at Grand Margherita yesterday.

He acknowledged that in today’s world, the Internet is an important catalyst of society’s civilisation and progress.

He said social media had become important as a communication tool, knowledge and information sharing platform by connecting people, strengthening relationship and friendship, sharing ideas and daily activities, and a platform for discussion as well as new business opportunities.

He also mentioned that Sarawak targeted to have a broadband household penetration rate of 50 per cent as currently only about 43 per cent of households in the state used broadband service.

“At the moment, the percentage of broadband household penetration rate is about 60 per cent throughout the country, and the government targets to increase the percentage to 75 per cent in 2015,” he said, adding that currently more than 16 million Internet users were using community access.

(Source: The Borneo Post online, 21/10/2011)