Prism Continues Move Into SE Asia

[30 January 2001] – Last week Prism Holdings announced the acquisition of Linkdatas Malaysian operations. A few days previously theyd announced the acquisition of 2 divisions from Nanoteq. This Tuesday theyve announced the acquisition of 30 percent of Telekom Applied Business (TAB), the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) arm of Telekom Malaysia (TM), for R30 million.

TM and Prism will also launch a joint venture, Telekom Technologies SDN Berhad, which will set up and operate a secure, national, electronic payment switch. This will be followed by support for mobile commerce transactions.

The technology behind Telekom Technologies will be supplied by TAB and based upon Prisms EasyPay payment solution, developed by its subsidiary, Transwitch Services.

Prism will have a 30 percent stake in Telekom Technologies, expected to be up and running before end 2001.

Significantly for Prism, TAB is Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) company. The MSC is a Malaysian government initiative to turn Malaysia into a globally competitive Knowledge economy by 2020. Financial incentives include 0 percent income tax up to 10 years and no duties on multimedia equipment.

There are also no employment limits on Multimedia Super Corridor companies, allowing them to employ all the foreign workers they wish.

Telekom Malaysia has a 20 percent stake in South Africam telecommunications company Telkom.