Malaysia's Maxis, which earns more than 90 percent of revenue from its mobile phone business, is keen to more than triple revenue from broadband services on wireless and fixed line in two to three years.

Sandip Das, chief executive of the country's top mobile phone operator, said the mobile phone business would remain the
'bread and butter' of the firm, but even within that it is keen to boost revenue from non-voice segment such as Internet access.

Maxis, which controls about 40 percent of the country's mobile phone market, and smaller rivals Axiata and Digi.com dominate Malaysia's mobile phone market.

Maxis is seeking to build its share in fixed-line broadband service by using Telekom Malaysia's high speed broadband network that aims to provide services to more than 700,000 households in Malaysia.

'When you look at Malaysia, where more than 50 percent of the population is under the age of 25, these are people who have grown on a diet of gadgets,' Das, who joined Maxis from Hutchison Essar Ltd in 2007, told Reuters in an interview.

'In the future, mobile broadband is going to struggle to cater to the data demand of these people.'

'We expect non-voice business for us to be in the region of a about 50 percent by 2012. We expect broadband business to start becoming double digit percentages towards 2012, 2013.' Currently, non-voice business contributes about 36 percent of of revenue within the company's mobile phone business.

Das said he hopes to give shareholders annual dividend payouts of more than 75 percent of net profit.

'While we have promised what we promised at the IPO, I think we will probably do better than what we promised.'

REUTERS