Through its chain of investment in Malta’s state-of-the-art digital infrastructure, Epic, together with their shareholders, Monaco Telecom, will be focusing on strengthening their workforce through the creation of new job opportunities, more student internships programmes, flexible working conditions and continuous growth and learning prospects for their 300+ workforce. This was announced during the launch of Epic’s newest service, the roll-out of their ‘faster and more affordable 2 Gigabit per second Fibre to the Home Internet’, with Mosta being the first locality to benefit from this service.
Minister for the Economy and Industry Silvio Schembri addressed the event and commended the extension of Epic’s investments in our country. Whilst looking forward to seeing other localities benefitting from this technology, he recalled Epic’s recently announced 40 million euro modernisation venture with its partner Ericsson. An investment, which in the Minister;s words, will continue to strengthen Malta’s attractiveness and competitiveness as this will provide higher speeds and more reliable connectivity.
Minister Schembri spoke about Malta’s digital transformation in the last seven years. He added that, “we are looking at the diversification of the Maltese economy into technologically advanced sectors. Priority will be given to the communications’ sector as this supports the growth of other sectors”.
He remarked that following the consolidation of the country’s infrastructure, the next step is to strengthen Malta’s human capital. “We believe that our workforce is the backbone of our economy and we will continue strengthening the workers. At a time when the world is facing a pandemic, workers have found and will keep on finding a government which supports them,” stated Minister Schembri
The Minister also spoke about the government’s ceaseless commitment to prioritise workers’ livelihood. He recalled the benefits reaped from the over 900 million euro economic regeneration plan. As a result of the government’s wise decisions, over 100,000 jobs were saved, and Malta became one of three EU countries which experienced an increase rather than a decrease in employment throughout the past year. In this regard, he commended Epic, for managing not only to safeguard the jobs of its employees but to enroll an extensive recruitment initiative with a special focus on talent in engineering, IT, and customer care.
The importance of assuring flexible working conditions in a digital age, was also mentioned by the Ministry for the Economy. Here, he acknowledged the fact that Epic is one of the companies that is adopting flexible working conditions by implementing work from home practices. He noted how in the regeneration plan, the government has also introduced a teleworking scheme, with every company receiving up to €4,000, a scheme which even Epic benefitted from. As the Minister said, “during the pandemic, teleworking was a crucial means which kept our business going and which ultimately was possible thanks to a robust broadband infrastructure and connectivity present on the island.
In his concluding remarks, the Minister expressed how nowadays high internet speed has become a necessity rather than a non-essential requirement. He referred to a recent study by the Malta Communications Authority on e-Commerce derived from a consumer survey held earlier this month, which concluded that 53% of digital buyers now buy from online suppliers based in Malta, whilst 15% of digital users foresee an increase in their online purchasing in the very near future. Furthermore, MCA key market indicators for electronic communications show that local mobile data consumption shot up by a staggering 141% in 2020.
Epic’s CEO Tamas Banyai commented that, “since May 2020, EPIC has been offering Malta’s most affordable fibre internet both for businesses as well as for consumers. We are now taking it one step further, as today we piloted a superior internet experience in terms of speed, device and service. With the Mosta pilot project, we re-emphasize the importance of strong connectivity to the economy and the community, especially for an island like Malta, which depends on interaction with Europe and international markets to remain competitive”.
