April 18, 2012
![](http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/images/uploads/2011/august/32/rtm-mobile0418.jpg)
A screen capture of the RTM Mobile site.
The Barisan Nasional (BN) government is going all-out to win over all demographics of voters, especially first-time voters, through various programmes and activities and The Malaysian Insider understands the online strategy is one of the main thrusts to ensure the ruling coalition keeps Putrajaya in the general election expected this year.
There has been a number of pro-government websites launched over the past six months to buttress the Najib administration’s views and achievements, particularly his transformation agenda in the government and economic fields.
However, none of them are officially connected to the government, unlike RTM Mobile, which is to be launched today by Information, Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim.
“RTM is putting four television channels and nine radio stations on RTM Mobile, and hopefully, it can reach out to those who don’t stay at home to watch such programming,” a source told The Malaysian Insider.
The channels and radio station are being broadcast on a streaming service using a local content delivery network (CDN) or cloud computing for a number of devices that can access mobile data. The service website address is www.rtm.gov.my/mobile
“RTM Mobile is available to thousands of concurrent users but it also depends on network capacity,” the source added.
According to the RTM Mobile website, accessing devices must also use web browsers that use HTML4 and HTML5, or Adobe’s Flash Player. Among the devices able to access RTM Mobile are those using operating systems such as BlackBerry, Apple’s iOS, Microsoft’s Windows Phone, Nokia’s Symbian OS and Google’s Android.
“Bear in mind, streaming media requires a lot of bandwidth usage. For example, watching our streaming TV for one hour will consume you around 88 megabytes for bandwidth usage. It’s highly advisable you use Wi-Fi internet connection to view the stream,” RTM Mobile recommended, adding the television channels are streamed at 200kbps, and radio at 96kbps
The RTM effort is part of a larger effort in the electronic broadcasting arena to spread the government message across the country.
Last December, Datuk Seri Najib Razak launched satellite pay-television provider Astro’s new free service NJOI, a service that took 19 months to take off from a promise by the prime minister to Sibu voters in May 2010, and seen as a way for Putrajaya to push its views to those without access to state-run and pro-government television stations.
The prime minister vowed during the Sibu by-election campaign that some 200,000 people in Sarawak and Sabah would enjoy free-to-air television via satellite from August 2010 but the intervening months have mutated the concept into a 1 Malaysia service starting with the urban poor.
There are currently 6.6 million TV households in the country and Astro has captured three million subscribers, but it has spent the past few years trying to expand among the Malays, the country’s dominant community and also among the largest group of urban poor.
The Astro service now offers 150 channels and it also has the B.yond high-definition offering besides IPTV offering.
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