KUALA LUMPUR – With the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission’s (MCMC) aim to amalgamate 5G into 80% of Malaysians’ lives by 2024, the Celcom-Digi merger will undoubtedly enhance and precede a better end-user cellular experience, said an academician.
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) School of Electrical Engineering lecturer Leow Chee Yen said the two colossal operators will be able to share their network infrastructure and leverage on each other’s signal strength in areas in which any of them has an advantage.
“In certain areas, maybe one of the operators has better network coverage and they can complement each other. They can provide services on their extensive combined network of bay stations.
“Certain operators have some advantages in certain areas and through this merger, they will be able to combine their infrastructure and assets so that they can offer the best experience to end-users,” he said in an interview recently.
Leow, who is also a research fellow with the UTM Wireless Communication Centre, said the infrastructure from these two companies would undoubtedly be a plus point from the cellular user’s point of view.
He said the inculcation of 5G supplants the limitation of the existing technologies – 4G, in terms of bandwidth, connection density, as well as latency, as demonstrated during the Covid-19 pandemic, when many users were accessing the Internet.
“Whenever a network is busy with too many users, there will be bottlenecks in the network. In terms of capacity ratio, we don’t have enough bandwidth to cater to users’ demand and by the end of the day, user experience will be affected,” he said.
On the 5G roll-out, although comparatively slower than other developed countries which started in 2019, Malaysia has to deal with challenges other countries may not have.
Citing South Korea and Singapore as examples, Leow said they have very extensive and comprehensive fibre connectivity, and only had to install 5G bay stations given existing supporting fibre connections and Singapore’s easier geographical terrain.
He said Malaysia’s 5G roll-out will take some time, particularly in areas where the nation does not have extensive availability of high bandwidth fibre links and may need additional time to construct fibre networks to provide connectivity to 5G bay stations.
“We already have had commercial 5G services in Malaysia since 2021 in several major cities and it will be coming to different parts of Malaysia eventually. Based on MCMC’s plan to have 80% of the population 5G-enabled by 2024, we are on track, even though we started a bit later than other developed countries,” he added. – Bernama, July 11, 2022
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