When I was used to work at a broadcast transmission equipment company which sell transmitters, antenna systems and telemetry devices from April 2019 to May 2020, I realized something about broadcast transmission market in Malaysia by comparing with Indonesia, and Thailand etc.
I didn't feel easy to take more radio broadcasters as my clients for Malaysia market by offering and introducing what my former company did actually. Malaysia broadcast transmission market is small, compare with Thailand and Indonesia, but bigger than Singapore and Brunei.
I don't compare with Singapore and Brunei as these two countries are very small.
Malaysia broadcast transmission towers are mostly dominated by Telekom Malaysia (TM), the biggest telecommunication company in Malaysia. I noticed that all Malaysia radio broadcasters are using TM broadcast transmission infrastructure, only few radio stations use CELCOM infrastructure.
Only campus radio stations own transmitter towers, meanwhile RTM also owns its transmitter tower, but in rural areas (gap filler transmitter).
It is not easy to offer transmitters system to RTM because all the deals are going through tenders. Of course, it is not easy to win the tenders because the participants need to meet the tender criteria, and somewhat it is about the human network relationship too.
Human network is important when coming to business deal of radio broadcast equipment.
What I attempted to deal with small scale of commercial radio broadcasters, most of their transmission equipment were offered by TM as it is under a package (not to disclose very much due to confidential story).
Malaysia broadcast transmission equipment market is smaller than studio equipment market because TM dominates the broadcast transmitter system services.
What I see is all Malaysia radio broadcasters use same transmitter sites due to strategic site to reach more areas, instead of owning transmitter tower. They don't compete each other in terms of transmission coverage, but they compete in terms of radio content.
In Thailand and Indonesia, many radio broadcasters have their own transmitter sites. So, you will realize transmitter towers of radio stations are everywhere. None of radio stations share transmitter tower with public broadcasters in Indonesia and Thailand.
In Thailand, very less radio stations are sharing transmitter sites. Some of community/commercial radio stations transmit from public broadcaster transmission tower, in fact they don't own transmitter, instead rent the frequency from public broadcaster via private lease. (Example: Virgin Hitz FM 95.5MHz in Bangkok, operated under Radio Thailand via private lease).
Most of radio broadcasters (public and commercial) in Malaysia broadcast nationwide by having more repeaters in the country, but Thailand and Indonesia radio stations don't have it.
In Thailand, the flagship national radio station, Radio Thailand FM 92.5MHz (also on AM 891kHz) doesn't broadcast nationwide by adding repeaters outside Bangkok area, but Radio Thailand launches provincial radio stations to cater local listeners by delivering localized content because most of listeners outside Central Thailand (Bangkok) don't listen to Bangkok content. Even Thailand famous commercial broadcaster in Bangkok like EFM 94, Greenwave 106.5, Hitz 955, MET107FM etc don't expand coverage nationwide as they focus only in Bangkok City, rather than available outside Bangkok via FM frequencies.
Some of Thailand radio stations have more frequencies, but they focus only the important provinces.
In Indonesia, only Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI) Pro-3 broadcasts nationwide as it is a news radio station for the country, the rest channels (PRO-1, PRO-2, PRO-4) are localized content.
Thailand and Indonesia have many community radio broadcasters, meanwhile Malaysia has very less community radio broadcasters. Malaysia community radio stations are mostly online based, rather than FM frequency.
Thailand and Indonesia radio stations can compete in terms of coverage and radio content. Different towers have different coverage.
It is not easy to run radio stations in Malaysia because radio broadcasters have to pay expensive transmission fees to TM when they use TM transmitter infrastructure. Having own transmitter site by building the tower is not easy in Malaysia because of transmitter coverage. Radio broadcasters may not get more listeners like what competitor did due to coverage.
The unique of Malaysia radio market is having multi-language radio stations where Thailand and Indonesia don't really have. In Thailand and Indonesia, there are few minority languages radio stations, but they broadcast only as slots.
Example: MCOT MET107FM, broadcast in Thai and English.
Overall, I feel Thailand and Indonesia radio broadcast markets are more competitive than Malaysia due to transmission towers as radio stations in Thailand and Indonesia own the towers, rather than renting infrastructure from a company.
