Most Malaysian parents hand a child their first phone hoping it opens up learning and keeps the family in touch. Tune Talk is now putting a familiar public-safety name behind the harder part of that moment: what a child can run into online, and what a parent can actually do about child online safety before something goes wrong.
The prepaid operator has appointed Dato' Sasikala Devi Subramaniam, former Deputy Chief Police Officer of Selangor, as brand ambassador for Epik+ Family Safe, its family prepaid plan that builds parental controls into the network itself. She spent more than 35 years in the Royal Malaysia Police, including senior roles in its Commercial Crime and Narcotics Crime Investigation Departments, and will front Tune Talk's public-education work on keeping children safer online.
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From reacting to harm towards preventing it
Sasikala's argument is that protecting children online cannot rest on parents alone, and cannot depend only on stepping in after an incident. Her years at the enforcement end, she says, were spent seeing the consequences when prevention had already failed.
"Children should not have to choose between being connected and being protected," she said. Her pitch is prevention by design, starting from a child's first digital experience: clearer first-phone conversations, family agreements on what is allowed, easy ways to report problems, privacy-conscious safeguards, and better digital literacy for parents as much as children.
She frames recent regulation, including the Online Safety Act and the restriction on social media accounts for children under 16, as an important step rather than a finish line. Laws and filters on their own, in her view, cannot protect a child who does not understand the risks or know where to turn for help. Local platforms have been moving in a similar direction, from TikTok alerting parents when their child posts to Apple's tighter controls for younger users.
Where the network fits in
Tune Talk's own contribution is Epik+ Family Safe, which it introduced as a family prepaid plan with protection applied at the network level rather than only through an app on the phone. The plan offers selectable protection levels and blocking across content categories, subject to its product terms. We covered how that network-enforced family plan works when it launched.
Both Sasikala and the operator are careful to call the technology one layer rather than a full answer. "A filter can support a family, but it cannot replace conversation, digital literacy, responsible platform practices, school policies or law enforcement," she said. Chief executive Gurtaj Singh Padda said the company wants to help parents move from awareness to action, and that responsible connectivity has to reach beyond simply selling access.
What it means for child online safety in Malaysia
The appointment is as much a signal as a product update. By pairing a prepaid brand with a career police officer, Tune Talk is trying to make child online safety feel like a routine parents can set up on day one, not a crisis they handle afterwards. Sasikala's closing point is that the real measure is not how well the country responds to incidents, but how much harm it prevents in the first place.
Tune Talk says it will keep working with parents, educators, policymakers and industry on safer ways for children to take part online. For families, the useful takeaway is simpler: the first phone is a good moment to agree the rules, switch on whatever safeguards the plan offers, and make sure the child knows who to tell if something feels wrong.
