Universiti Malaya vice-chancellor Prof Dr Mohd Amin Jalaludin has denied allegations that the university would introduce a five gigabyte quota on free Internet access at the start of the new semester next March.

In a statement, Mohd Amin was responding to claims made by the Universiti Malaya Association Youth (Umany) and Persatuan Mahasiswa Islam UM (PMIUM) at a press conference on campus earlier today.

“There would be no limit imposed on the WIFI access on campus as the 5GB bandwidth is actually an upgrade from the (current) 3GB for the benefit of the students. In fact, rather than limiting it, the upgrade of 5GB represents the largest bandwidth access amongst all public universities.

“For 2016, we are also looking to the possibility of further increasing the bandwidth by another two GB through the Myren initiatives,” he said.

Mohamad Amin also denied claims by Umany president Ho Chi Yang that students will be charged for usage above 5GB bandwidth.

“The management would like to clarify that students would not be charged for extra usage and any decision on that matter will be not be done without seeking a dialogue with student representatives,”

Umany and the PMIUM had earlier claimed that the purported proposal would further burden students, particularly those from faculties that rely heavily on Internet access to conduct research for their course work.

‘ No compromise on ICT facilities’

Mohamad Amin, meanwhile, stressed that UM has not compromised its ICT facilities.

“In fact, we are spending more for ICT and the students. We now want to monitor the usage of the Internet by individuals and not limit its usage,” he said.

Mohamad Amin had previously also reassured that UM will not be raising its tuition fees as part of mitigation measures for its latest budget cut as announced under Budget 2016.

The annual funding for UM is expected to be slashed by nearly 30 percent, down to RM463 million next year.