07 March 2024 - As an initiative to raise nationwide awareness on cable theft, a community engagement programme was developed by Unified National Networks (UNN), Authority for Info-communications Technology Industry of Brunei Darussalam (AITI) with collaboration from the Royal Brunei Police Force (RBPF) to brief community leaders from the four districts of Brunei Darussalam. The cable theft awareness program consisted of four separate briefing sessions, which started in the Brunei-Muara District on 13 December 2022, followed by Belait District on 13 June 2023, Temburong District on 08 November 2023 and ended in Tutong District on 05 February 2024.
District Officers, penghulus, ketua kampungs, Majlis Perundingan Kampung, community leaders, and members of the Neighbourhood Watch Committee from each district were invited to attend the briefing at their districts, where subject matter experts from UNN, AITI and RBPF shared relevant information about cable theft with the main objective to educate communities on the negative impacts of cable theft to the population and country.
During each briefing session, UNN Vice President of Service Delivery, Field, Rollout and Power (SDFRP) Dk Hajah Martini Pg Abd Rahman would start by informing the audience about the loss resulting from cable theft cases, how these cases impact UNN technicians who were deployed to the sites affected by cable thefts regardless of time when a cable cut is detected, and the arduous hours these technicians spent in the field to repair the cable cuts caused by these thefts so that the loss of connectivity experienced by consumers can be expedited.
Dk Hajah Martini would further inform the audience that the copper and fibre cables rolled out by UNN to build the telecommunication network infrastructure have no actual resell value and would not bring monetary gains to the perpetrators of cable thefts and emphasized that cable thefts bring more harm to the country as they cause disruptions to the network resulting in hours of connectivity loss to businesses and consumers.
UNN Corporate Communications & PR Analyst Safuan Shah Bidin would step in to highlight the negative impacts that cable thefts can affect the socio-economic activities and safety of the public and organizations and underlined how the communities can play a role in safeguarding the nation’s telecommunication infrastructure. A presentation of the official and authorized UNN uniforms would follow suit to equip audience with the knowledge of identifying UNN technicians and contractors working on-site so they can verify that the activities carry out around their districts are not malicious or suspicious.
At the briefing sessions, audience would also be treated to the current progress of UNN fibre rollout program and a showcase of several types of cables so that they are aware of the complexity of repairing cables that were tampered, cut, or stolen and why reparation works can take minimum eight hours to complete.
RBPF would then conclude each briefing with insights to the current laws governing the national assets and highlighted the penalties that perpetrators would face if these laws were broken and would proceed to encourage communities to contact the authorities upon seeing suspicious activities around UNN infrastructure in their mukims and kampungs.
While this community engagement programme has concluded, UNN and its partners have observed the positive response from audiences during the briefing sessions, which affirms their continuous and ongoing efforts to raise nationwide awareness on cable theft. More community engagement exercises are being planned for the remainder of the year to further equip communities with knowledge and updates about the Brunei telecommunication industry and to further instil in them an obligation as responsible citizens to safeguard national assets.