KINIBIZ On Monday, Communications and Multimedia Minister Salleh Said Keruak said complaints about slow Internet speeds in Malaysia are because the people cannot afford higher speed Internet.

Salleh’s statement seems to imply that the people are not willing to pay for better broadband. Tiger thinks we shouldn’t have to.

Salleh was reportedly refuting a post by DAP’s Lim Kit Siang that he remains unconcerned about Malaysia’s poor Internet speeds, which are slower than other Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand and Singapore.

In a blog post on Monday night, Salleh ( photo ) also said 71 percent of Malaysian Internet users preferred the slower Streamyx broadband packages that offered speeds of between 384 kilobit per second (Kbps) to 1 megabit per second (Mbps).

According to him, this was their preference over much higher speeds - albeit - more expensive packages offered by the Internet service providers (ISPs).

Well done, minister, well done. In one blog post, you have not only managed to insult the people’s economic status, you’ve also managed to insult their intelligence.

For one, you’ve insinuated that our lower broadband speeds, compared to neighbouring Singapore, for instance, is because we don’t want to pay more for higher broadband.

While that may be true, there’s one important truth you are not conveniently pointing out: the lack of affordable high-speed broadband packages made available to consumers.

For the full story go to KINIBIZ .

This article is written by G Sharmila.