Overview of Malaysia's Trunking Market
Electcoms, Malaysia's leading trunking radio and radio-paging operator, has 400 MHz MPT and 800 MHz analogue trunking systems. These trunking systems principally cover the key areas of the economically developed West Malaysia with a capacity of over 80,000 trunking subscribers and about 10,000 paging subscribers.

Electcoms is one of the two operators that have been licensed to operate a national trunking network. The company has played a crucial role in the field of radio trunking communications since it entered the Malaysian analogue trunking communications market in 1989. However, after years of operation, Electcoms found itself in a difficult situation: on the one hand, the paging business was declining, and on the other hand, the existing analogue radio trunking systems have limited expandability and need to find new technologies to replace them.　 

Electcoms' GoTa Network Plan
Electcoms began to track the digital trunking technology and solutions in 1999. The company reviewed a wide range of vendors for the current project and selected ZTE's CDMA-based Global open Trunking architecture (GoTa) as a strategic technology for the future development of its trunking networks based on the system's feature-rich services and advanced digital technologies.　

In December 2005, when Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, visited Malaysia, ZTE signed a commercial contract with Electcoms at the signing ceremony of "China-Malaysia Economic Cooperation Projects", which marked the start of a long-term strategic cooperation between ZTE and Electcoms. 


The Electcoms GoTa network was built in three phases. Phase 1 of the network covers West Malaysia, including Kuala Lumpur, and is expected to reach a subscriber base of about 50,000 in two to three years; Phase 2 and Phase 3 will expand the Phase 1 system to cover the whole of Malaysia.

In the initial stage of network development, Electcoms will utilize the differentiated capabilities of the newly built GoTa system to develop new customer groups. The Malaysian government required the analogue-to-digital conversion of all the trunking networks to be completed by the end of 2008; Electcoms planned to migrate all the existing analogue trunking subscribers to the GoTa network.

On January 9, 2007, Electcoms held a press conference in Kuala Lumpur announcing the commercial use of the network based on ZTE's GoTa. This is the large-scale commercialization of the Chinese-developed digital trunking system in the overseas market.

Reasons for Choosing GoTa
Equipment pricing
In order to adapt to competition, Electcoms started to trace the digital trunking technologies and solutions as early as 1999.

Electcoms has considered the Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN) technology and made contacts with Motorola, which then budgeted the costs of deploying an iDEN system in West Malaysia for Electcoms. However, Electcoms thought the network-side equipment were far too expensive, and that it would be impossible for them to control the future network construction and operating costs. In fact, Electcoms knew well the Asia-Pacific's trunking communications market: the iDEN networks of trunking operators in the Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore were running at little or no profit, or even at a loss; two iDEN operators in Singapore have merged for survival, but their situation has not improved yet.　

Network coverage
Electcoms has been invited to visit Sprint Nextel's iDEN commercial network in the U.S. Through field testing, Electcoms felt the network test results, especially the coverage results, failed to meet its expectation. However, the GoTa digital trunking system has significant greater coverage capability than iDEN, winning high favor from Electcoms.

Security
Electcoms has 30,000 legitimate trunking subscribers on its existing 800 MHz analogue trunking network, but the fraudulent subscribers reached 20,000. Electcoms often has to dedicate manpower to detect and prevent subscriber number cloning. On the contrast, GoTa gives enhanced authentication and privacy.　　　　

Professional trunking and rich value-added services
Electcoms, as a private enterprise, is very cautious about its future development direction. To really know about GoTa products, Electcoms's top officials came to China to visit China Tietong and China Satcom's GoTa commercial trials, and tested key technical indicators such as GoTa services, coverage, call setup time and voice quality. With the test results far exceeding their expectation, Electcoms's management finally made the decision to adopt GoTa as the technology for their future network development. Moreover, Electcoms was impressed with the value-added services supported by the GoTa system, such as data services, SMS and Location Based Service (LBS), and the basic dispatch control station services.　　

ZTE's powerful R&D strength
Through visiting the company, reading major media reports, and especially by knowing the fact that ZTE is listed on Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Electcoms believes ZTE is an excellent enterprise with powerful R&D and management capabilities, with which they can enter into a long-term strategic partnership.　

Electcoms' future development plan
Electcoms is currently focusing on professional radio trunking communications. Electcoms hopes to continually attract customers with its professional trunking services at first and then utilize the GoTa system's value-added data services to explore potential customers, building a mature trunking network. GoTa is undoubtedly the best choice for Electcoms as it employs 3G wireless technology and advanced system structure to bring new space for service development of trunking technology, which also strengthens Electcoms' commitment to GoTa as the future development trend.