The Malaysia Star reports that Telekom Malaysia is switching some of its customers from wired to wireless access, specifically "in some areas of Sarawak that are badly affected by the theft of telephone cables."

"We have this problem everywhere in the state," says Telekom Malaysia's Omar Zaki Mustafa. "We have cable theft in Sibu, in parts of Kuching like Matang Jaya, in Miri, Bintulu, all over."

"To overcome it, he said TM was in the process of switching customers from fixed line to wireless service in areas where there is coverage," the article states.

"It costs us more than RM1mil to put up one base station for our wireless network with a capacity of 500 to 1,000 customers," Omar says. "We have no choice becase cables are being stolen so many times. In some places we have replaced the cables repeatedly and still they get stolen."