Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng today launched 50 high-speed Wifi hotspots in the Heritage and Komtar areas in George Town.

The public in these areas will now be able to enjoy a speed of 3Mbps compared to 1Mbps at the other Wifi hotspots.

“With the faster speed now at your fingertips, I hope users will be able to do more things better, for example when downloading videos and images.

“Overall, their web browsing experience will be enhanced at these 50 high-speed hotspots,” Lim said at a press conference today.

“The Penang government believes that faster internet or digital broadband speed is a necessary and sufficient condition to become a high-income economy and developed country,” he added.

Penang launched its first free Wifi service in 750 public places on the island and mainland in 2009.

According to Lim, the number of registered users for the free Wifi is 600,000.

“Today, six years after the launch, we have gradually increased the number of free Wifi hotspots to 1,560 in the island itself and the mainland,” said Lim, who is the Bagan MP.

Definitely good

“Besides enabling more people access to the free service, we have upgraded the bandwidth from 75Mbps to 375Mbps in February, this year,” he said.

Lim ( photo ), who is also DAP secretary-general, said when the state first embarked on this venture, certain quarters have criticised him for not consulting the public on whether they want free Wifi.

However, the state went ahead and launched the free Wifi hotspots as it was definitely good for Penangites and tourists, he added.

Lim also took a dig at Communications and Multimedia Minister Salleh Said Keruak, saying the latter may prefer lower broadband speeds.

Salleh had said 71 percent of Malaysian internet users preferred the slower Streamyx broadband package that offered speeds of between 384 kilobyte per second (Kbps) and one megabyte per second (Mbps).

This is because Malaysians could not afford faster internet packages that were more expensive, he added.

His statement prompted Lim to ask if he (Salleh) preferred a ‘cheetah or a snail’.

“This is just like declaring that we can move forward by going backwards," he said.