The government will not introduce a flat rate on telephone calls for Internet users anytime soon, said Deputy Minister of Energy, Communications and Multimedia Tan Chai Ho.

"At this moment, we cannot consider introducing a flat rate for Internet calls," Tan told malaysiakini in an interview this morning.

He cited the high infrastructure cost incurred by Telekom Malaysia as the main reason behind timed local calls.

While Internet access rates have been reduced, and waived in the case of Internet service provider MaxisNet, surfing the Internet remains a costly affair due to timed local calls.

The current Internet phone charges are between 1.5 sen to 3 sen per minute, which amount to approximately RM0.90 to RM1.80 an hour.

While MaxisNet does not impose any access fee on its users, it has a relatively high phone call charge of 3 sen per minute. The other two Internet service providers, Jaring and TMNet, charge 1.5 sen per minute, on top of an access fee of 1 sen per minute.

When asked about the complaints lodged by various highend Internet users that the cost was too prohibitive for them, Tan conceded that he has received such protests from foreign investors.

"The government had instructed Telekom to 'review, consider or attend to those complaints'," he said.

Nevertheless, the government had instructed Telekom to reassess the price structure for highend Internet access.

"However, they (Telekom) haven't come up with a suggestion to us," he added.

Highend users comprise mostly IT-related companies that require the use of broad bandwidth lines, particularly those investing in the Multimedia Super Corridor.

Leased lines and ISDN are two examples of such lines, which can carry up to 2.5 gigabytes of data per second.