PUTRAJAYA – Digital Nasional Bhd (DNB) is offering wholesale 5G services to all mobile network operators (MNOs) in the country for a commercial trial from December 15 to March 31 next year at no cost, said its chief commercial officer Ahmad Taufek Omar.
He said the offer is applicable for all 5G live sites that will be ready throughout Putrajaya, Cyberjaya and parts of Kuala Lumpur.
“We call it a commercial trial. When we start something new, we are talking about serving five to six ‘big brothers’ – they need to experience it first,” he told a media preview on the 5G experience in Putrajaya yesterday.
On how many MNOs have agreed to sign up for the offer, he said, so far, only one MNO has signed up and the rest are still in discussion.
“We are aggressively following up with others – there are five MNOs – so we can bring them on board,” he said, adding that the current discussions are pointing towards positive development.
DNB, wholly owned by Minister of Finance Inc, has been mandated by the government to be the single neutral party to undertake the deployment of 5G infrastructure and network nationwide.
Media reports yesterday said Telekom Malaysia Bhd had confirmed it will be conducting 5G trials with DNB to optimise the services.
Asked about why the MNOs have yet to sign up with DNB for the trials, Taufek said the 5G network is still a new thing in Malaysia and most of them have a lot of questions.
“The industry players sat down with us every week to make sure we address all the necessary issues. They need to make sure all their concerns or existing questions are answered because there has never been a situation of one company hosting five ‘big brothers’ together,” he said.
Meanwhile, Taufek said, DNB, as a provider of wholesale 5G services, would not be competing with the industry in providing 5G retail services to end users, but would instead be complementing efforts by the MNOs with the aim of accelerating the adoption of 5G in the country.
He said the availability of 5G services opens up new and exciting innovation with vastly improved connectivity speeds able to support the use of streaming and downloading of 8K quality video content, cloud-based gaming, and augmented reality and virtual reality content.
End users with 5G-compatible devices will be able to enjoy speeds of 100Mbps and above, which means a user at the weakest point of 5G coverage would experience 100Mbps on a 5G-compatible device, he said.
Last Friday, DNB said it expected to roll out 10% 5G coverage in Putrajaya, Cyberjaya and Kuala Lumpur by the end of this month, with a cumulative site count of 500.
This will increase to 4,018 sites or 40% coverage in the populated areas of Penang, Johor, Sabah, Sarawak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Perak next year.
DNB also aims to reach 80% coverage of populated areas in the country by 2024 with 7,509 sites. – Bernama, December 6, 2021
