Regulatory 3G Debacle in Malaysia

Here's a sorry regulatory development from Malaysia, my home country:

Digi, majority owned by Telenor and an agile no. 3 mobile player in the market, failed to get a 3G licence in Malaysia. So we thought we had gotten passed cronyism and toll-mentality business in Malaysia?

Poor Digi, this is what they get for being the most innovative mobile telco in Malaysia, and after setting up a (genuine) global R&D Centre for mobile applications in Cyberjaya. You would have thought the Malaysian Multimedia Commission would have Digi take up one of the two 3G licences up for grabs. No instead the first was given to Time dot Com, a half rate company that failed in 2G mobile and but got rescued by Maxis in the form a pay-off (arm-twisted by the regulators at the time). The second was given to MiTV, a company that is more vapour ware and hype, and controlled by tycoon Vincent Tan(who incidentally used to owned a majority share in Digi, whose performance languished until Telenor took majority share and management control).

No doubt this is a flipping exercise. Vincent Tan will have a second bite at the cherry in reselling 3G capacity to Digi (greedy, as since Tan's departure, Telenor has more than double Digi's stock price, which benefited Tan handsomely). Life is not fair, but this is really really unprofessional. Great signals we're sending to the investor community, who, as it is, are already bypassing Malaysia in the rush to China.

Bad show MCMC, we expect more from you.