Can't have TM dominating and monopolizing a wholesale network again.

Look at what they did with the HSBB. Cannot allow them to drag everyone along with it anymore.

In future healthy competition can only work if there's more than 1 single wholesale network. Whether it's fibre national backbone or last mile.

You got it wrong there with Malaysian style of monopoly through the control of wholesale at the same time becoming a retailer of the same product.

If TNB resells electricity as a wholesaler and at same time allow many retail energy companies to set up as retails fronts while they themselves join the competition, there is a tendency for the wholesaler to CHEAT and implement unfair practices to favor its own brand.

This was what happened to the HSBB network owned solely by TM. They were commissioned by the government to build and operate the country's open wholesale network for retail ISPs while they run their OWN UniFi retail brand among the competition. The outcome was what happened? Unifi being the brand owned by TM Wholesale themselves played dirty by building just enough ports for a few then reserved all of them initially for themselves so that other ISPs couldn't beat them to the game.

The same could happened too with 5G if the other telco players are not careful. TM will once again dominate the network all for their own Unifi Mobile brand and leave the leftovers for the other players by manipulating port and bandwidth pricing. Only when an alternative network emerges then TRUE competition will prevail.

I give you another scenario. Let's say our country BERNAS holds full control over its supply chain and wholesale price setting. All rice supplies have to go through them first distributed to retail brands to be repacked to be sold in the grocer marts. BERNAS gets to set the wholesale price to the retailers to regulate all their prices. What happens when the wholesale distributor themselves enter the retail market and pack their own brand of rice to be sold to end consumers?

Can they start playing dirty by reserving only the good stock all for their retailer brand and dictate the others by setting a price which will always favor themselves so that no other retailer brands could beat them to the competition?

Not directly related actually. One is a MNC which operates in many countries the other more of a local brand.

The CEO of Celcom Axiata once mentioned before that dealing with TM is a challenge. It's more of company with staffs too used to GLC style attitudes.

That's why Celcom decided to build their own alternative fibre network in Sabah under the brand Celcom Timur to compete with TM HSBB directly. Same goes for TNB Allo for Peninsula Malaysia and SACOFA for Sarawak.

Where it failed was the wholesale provider themselves got into the retail ISP business themselves so they made the other players who bought wholesale bandwidth from them at the losing end while the favor their own ISP branding.

This was why the wholesale idea failed. The wholesale provider had to be NEUTRAL to all retail service providers/ISPs that bought bandwidth from them. Not enter into the game with their own retail ISP and outdo others!