The price of nearly every service this index tracks has risen over the past eleven years. Technology is where it barely happened.
We counted this from the Department of Statistics Malaysia's Services Producer Price Index, which measures the prices received by Malaysian service producers. Across the 16 service divisions it covers, telecommunications rose 0.4 per cent, information services 2.1 per cent and computer and IT services 2.3 per cent, between the first quarter of 2015 and the second quarter of 2026. They are the three slowest-rising sectors in the index, and we group these three, telecommunications, computer and IT services, and information services, under the label technology throughout this piece.
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Over the same window, food and beverage service rose 52.4 per cent, air transport 24.5 per cent, education 15.2 per cent, and the overall services index 14.7 per cent. The median sector rose about 9 per cent. The three technology sectors sit far below all of them.
Every service sector, from most to least inflated
| Service sector | Price change, 2015 to 2026 |
|---|---|
| Food and beverage service | +52.4% |
| Air transport | +24.5% |
| Gambling and betting | +20.7% |
| Postal and courier | +20.6% |
| Education | +15.2% |
| Sports and recreation | +12.3% |
| Real estate | +9.9% |
| Human health | +9.6% |
| Accommodation | +8.7% |
| Land transport | +8.2% |
| Legal and accounting | +5.9% |
| Architecture and engineering | +4.3% |
| Water transport | +3.3% |
| Computer and IT services | +2.3% |
| Information services | +2.1% |
| Telecommunications | +0.4% |
| Overall services index | +14.7% |
A telecom price that has not moved for a decade
Telecommunications is the sharpest case. Its index began the period at 100.4 and ended at 100.8, and across all 46 quarters it never left a narrow band between 99.7 and 100.8. The series was not static: it changed from the preceding quarter 16 times, yet it always came back inside that band. Food and beverage service, by contrast, changed in almost every quarter and climbed more than half over the period.
Malaysia has regulated the wholesale prices that telecom operators charge each other for years, including through the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission's Commission Determination on the Mandatory Standard on Access Pricing of February 2023, which set wholesale access-price ceilings the regulator intended to enable lower retail broadband prices. The flat index predates that 2023 determination, so it is part of a longer pattern rather than its result. We state both and do not claim one produced the other.
What this measures, and what it does not
This index measures the prices service providers charge, which is not the same as the advertised price of a consumer phone or broadband plan. What it shows is clear enough: telecommunications prices have stayed almost flat, computing and information-services prices rose only about 2 per cent, while nearly every other service it measures rose more, and most rose far more.
We saw a similar pattern in consumer prices last week, in a separate measure over a different period. DOSM's Consumer Price Index (the cpi_headline series on data.gov.my) shows the information and communication division, which covers the phones, computers and telecom plans households buy, was one of only two of its 13 divisions to fall between January 2010 and August 2026, down 8.9 per cent, with clothing and footwear the other. That is a different dataset, a different buyer and a different window from the service figures above, so it is not a like-for-like comparison. The two measures land on the same point from opposite sides: the consumer technology basket fell outright, and business technology services rose far more slowly than other services.
The limits
These are index numbers, so they describe the direction and size of price movements, not ringgit amounts. The comparison runs over a single matched window, the first quarter of 2015 to the second quarter of 2026, which is the full span the division-level series covers, and every sector is measured over exactly those dates. The most recent four quarters of the index may still be revised by DOSM. Of the three technology sectors, information services changed value in the fewest quarters. The index covers service producers, so hardware such as handsets and laptops, measured in the consumer index, is not in it.
Anyone can reproduce this. Download the Services Producer Price Index by division (dataset sppi_2d) from data.gov.my, keep the index series, and compare each sector's value in the first quarter of 2015 against the second quarter of 2026. The telecommunications, computing and information divisions are the three lowest.
