HOW fast is Malaysia’s Internet Siput (snail-paced Internet)?

If you are a student at a remote school on the east coast of Sabah, you need to climb a tree to get any reception at all. Or, for a slightly faster signal, you can climb a water tank tower.

The signal at both locations is super slow, about 1Mbps (megabits per second). And Internet Siput is intermittent, so you’ll receive chat messages only sporadically. If you want a better signal, drive a 4WD along muddy roads up a hill 6 km away.

A few years ago, I wrote about the Internet Siput experienced by the students of SK Lubang Buaya.

Kampung Lubang Buaya – Crocodile Hole Village – is located by the 6m-wide Sungai Paitan, about 200 km from Beluran town in Sabah.

The colourful name comes from a reptile pit upstream from the village where, according to legend, a big crocodile named Black lives.

About 95 per cent of SK Lubang Buaya students come from the village where the school is located. The villagers are mostly vegetable farmers and estate workers who earn about RM250 to RM400 a month.

There is no electricity or piped water supply in the village.

For potable water, the villagers rely on rain and the river. They bathe in Sungai Paitan when it is not the season for the crocodiles to venture downstream of the reptile pit.

Spotting a crocodile in Kampung Lubang Buaya is easier than getting an Internet signal.

The situation is the same in many remote areas in Sabah and Sarawak.

Remember that viral story about a determined student climbing a tree to get a signal to do her exams? There are many such tales that don’t get as much publicity.

“Now we have ConnectMe Now, which is quite fast. The only thing is the limited Internet quota, just 5GB per month per teacher,” Edmond Eric told me yesterday.

The 36-year-old Dusun Tindal is a SK Lubang Buaya teacher.

“We use up the quota in one week of doing work online. If we need more data, we have to buy the top-up ourselves, which is RM50 for 5GB.”

The teacher said the ConnectMe Now contract has ended and will be replaced with Starlink (yes, the satellite service owned by Elon Musk).

On Wednesday, I was reminded of my Internet Siput article when I learned that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) had started investigating payment claims for the Education Mini-stry’s 1BestariNet service project worth RM4bil.

I’ve always wondered how a RM4 billion project could provide only Internet Siput services to schoolchildren. For them, the Internet is a window to the world from home, which can be 100 km from “civilisation”.

Fast Internet access could be a game changer for them as a 10 km journey from their isolated village can take one hour because of a tanah merah (red mud) roads.

For middle-class kids living in urban and semi-urban parts of Malaysia, 5G Internet access is a given, just like piped water and continuous electricity. But for rural kids, it is all a privilege.

Without easy and consistent access to a fast Internet service, rural kids are robbed of their future.

In June 2019, then Education minister, Dr Maszlee Malik, announced that the 1BestariNet contract to provide Internet access and a virtual learning environment to over 10,000 public schools nationwide had ended after seven years of service.

1BestariNet was introduced in 2011 by the Education Ministry, then under Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, now Bersatu president.

The project came under scrutiny in reports by the Auditor-General and Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee in 2013 and 2014.

The reports highlighted delays in delivering and implementing the RM4 billion programme, and bad performance complaints from teachers and other stakeholders.

I had my suspicions about why the Internet provided for rural school children was as fast as a snail.

In September 2021, Maszlee, who had quit as Education minister, revealed that then Home Minister Muhyiddin had pressured then prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to get Maszlee to give up the Education portfolio during the 22-month Pakatan Harapan government over the 1BestariNet matter.

On Friday, Muhyiddin declared that he had not taken a single sen from the billion-ringgit 1BestariNet service tender.

“It has nothing to do with me. Previously, there was an investigation as someone made a report but the case was investigated and no action was taken,” said the Perikatan Nasional chairman and Opposition leader.

“I do not know why the matter is being raised again now, as during the previous investigation, I was not involved.”

Let’s see if the current MACC investigation will proceed faster than a snail’s pace.