Information Communication and Culture Minister Dr Rais Yatim lodged a police report at the Dang Wangi police station today against two bloggers.

The two blogs - Taikors and Taikuns and bigdogdotcom - had alleged that his son was one of the beneficiaries of the ministry's RM1 billion grant to improve broadband access in the country.

rais yatim pc 020709 01 Rais was also quoted in the Malay Mail yesterday as saying that the claims made in the blogs smacked of character assassination.

He said that in his 40 years of public service, he had never availed nor allowed himself to indulge in acts associated with "those false and wild allegations".

Rais said that it was sad and unfortunate to find the bloggers had also adversely speculated on the alleged wrongdoing of the secretary-general of the Information Communication and Culture Ministry and other public servants.

The minister said that he would also make a report with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) so that an investigation could be underway.

    

Nine telcos get 4G technology spectrum

Meanwhile, the MCMC announced today that nine companies have been assigned the 2600MHz spectrum band to roll out wireless broadband services using 4G technology by Jan 1, 2013.

The companies include existing 3G and WiMAX players, and a new entrant.

They are Celcom Axiata Berhad, Maxis Broadband Sdn Bhd, DiGi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd, U-Mobile Sdn Bhd, Asiaspace Sdn Bhd, Packet One Networks (M) Sdn Bhd, RedTone Marketing Sdn Bhd, YTL Communications Sdn Bhd and Puncak Semangat Sdn Bhd.

4G refers to the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards. It is a successor to 3G and 2G families of standards.

The decision to award to the nine was made after a consultative and deliberation process with various technical groups, MCMC said in a statement.

MCMC also stressed that these companies were required to pay fees in order to use the spectrum band and would not receive grants of any kind from MCMC or the Universal Service Provision (USP) Fund for the utilisation of the spectrum.

The USP Fund is for the development and deployment of communications facilities for rural development.

- Bernama