The Starlink-telco handshake that can finally connect all of Malaysia

 Starlink wants to beam internet straight into ordinary Malaysian phones, no tower required. Far from being a threat to our telcos, it could be the final missing piece of a national network they were never going to be able to finish alone.

Our telcos have a problem, and contrary to popular grumbling, it is not one of ambition or ability. It is one of arithmetic.

A telecommunications tower typically takes 18 to 24 months to build, and in a sparsely populated interior district it may never earn back what it cost. This, more than anything, explains why our last coverage gaps stubbornly refuse to close, even now, five years and billions of ringgit into the Jendela connectivity plan.

In Julau, Sarawak, only 58% of populated areas had 4G coverage as of June 2025, according to the communications ministry’s written reply in Parliament to Julau MP Larry Sng, and just 1,391 of the district’s 3,784 premises can get fibre.

Zoom out and the pattern holds. As of late 2025, 5G covered 82% of the country but only 62% of Sarawak and 69% of Sabah, and while the communications ministry this month reaffirmed its target of 100% internet access in populated areas by 2027, the hardest miles of that promise will invariably be the slowest and costliest to deliver.

But what if I told you that the solution to this decades-old conundrum has been quietly assembling itself 550km above our heads?

As of mid-2026, more than 10,000 satellites, roughly two of every three active ones in orbit, belong to a single network: Starlink, the satellite internet arm of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which now serves around 12 million customers across 164 countries.

And just this week, that constellation came knocking on our door. As reported by The Edge, Starlink representatives met communications minister Fahmi Fadzil to propose trialling direct-to-device (D2D) technology in Malaysia.

In simple terms, D2D lets the ordinary phone in your pocket connect to a satellite the same way it would to a nearby cell tower, except this “tower” is hurtling through space 550km up, which means no dish on the roof, no special hardware and no waiting for infrastructure that may never come. For now, the bandwidth suits messages and light data rather than movie marathons, but it improves with every launch.

“This would mark a significant technological leap if implemented, as it means internet connectivity could be provided via satellite in certain areas where there are no telecommunications towers or where the population is too sparse to justify such infrastructure,” Fahmi said.

He’s spot on.

Before the naysayers cry foul about a foreign giant devouring our homegrown telcos, let’s look at the numbers.

Starlink has held a licence here since July 2023 and today sells its Residential 100 plan at RM135 a month for speeds of up to 100Mbps, with its standard plan going for RM235 a month for up to 400Mbps.

Compare that with what the incumbents offer: Unifi sells 100Mbps fibre from RM89 a month, CelcomDigi from RM99, and Time will happily hand you a full gigabit for RM199. Where fibre reaches, it is cheaper, faster and more reliable than any satellite, and no constellation, however massive, is going to change that.

So this was never a fight for the same customer. Starlink cannot beat fibre in Bangsar, and no fibre operator can economically reach a fishing village in Pitas or a longhouse upriver from Kapit. One serves density while the other serves distance, and our national map will only be complete when the two layers work in tandem.

If this sounds like wishful thinking, consider that the template already exists. Enter T-Mobile.

The American carrier’s T-Satellite service, powered by Starlink, launched commercially in July 2025 and now delivers messaging, location sharing and app data to around 60 ordinary phone models for US$10 (RM41) a month, backed by more than 650 direct-to-cell satellites in orbit as of January 2026.

Here’s the kicker: T-Mobile did not lose a single customer to SpaceX. It kept them, along with the billing and the branding, while quietly selling coverage that no tower network on earth could match.

That is the model Malaysia should race towards, which is why Fahmi’s instruction to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to invite our telcos to meet Starlink and explore deployment opportunities is exactly the right move.

So what should we do now? Three things.

First, run the trial with real teeth: publish its results, set deadlines, and let telcos strike commercial D2D partnerships quickly instead of strangling the technology in consultation papers.

Second, spend smarter. Our telcos already pay 6% of their weighted net revenue into the Universal Service Provision (USP) fund, money the MCMC collects precisely to connect areas the market cannot profitably serve.

Wherever a tower cannot pay for itself, that fund should subsidise satellite terminals and D2D access for remote schools, clinics and longhouses instead. Connectivity is the goal, after all. The tower was only ever a means.

Third, our telcos should move first rather than wait to be moved. A Maxis or CelcomDigi plan with satellite messaging bundled in, the way T-Mobile does it, would transform rural coverage from their weakest selling point into their strongest overnight.

Our telcos have spent three decades building a network that covers almost everyone, and Starlink is now offering the piece that covers everyone else. The tower takes two years to reach the village, but the satellite is already overhead, so all that’s left is for the MCMC, our telcos and Starlink to get in a room and strike a deal.

After all, the longhouse upriver has waited long enough. - FMT

The writer can be contacted at kathirgugan@protonmail.com. - 

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.