While Malaysia’s mass 5G adoption is still up in the air pending agreements with major telcos, the national 5G network rollout by Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB) appears to be progressing according to plan. YTL Communications CEO Wing K Lee revealed that Malaysia now has 90% 5G population coverage in Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Cyberjaya, and on the national level, it has covered 30% of the population.
During an interview on Astro Awani, Wing said there’s a lot of myth out there that 5G is only available in certain spots in the country. He said that might be the case in December last year during the soft launch but they have been working non-stop together with colleagues from DNB to expand coverage. He added they have been using some of their existing towers to help DNB to the extent that it makes sense to them to take advantage of.
Wing said today they have 90% population coverage in Kuala Lumpur, Cyberjaya and Putrajaya. They have also gone outside of the Klang Valley with 5G services now available in Johor Bahru, Selangor, Perak and very soon they are moving up north to Penang. He also said the Minister has recently announced that 5G is available in Kelantan.
The CEO explained that DNB in 13 months’ time has built over a thousand 5G sites to get us where we are today with 30% 5G population coverage. He said the hardest part is done and from this point on it’s repeating the template state by state. Wing recapped that DNB’s rollout target is to achieve 40% population coverage by the end of 2022 and they aim to achieve 80% population coverage nationwide by the end of 2024, which is faster than Malaysia’s 3G and 4G rollout.
Responding to criticism that Malaysia is far behind, he said in light of the fact that Malaysia only pulled the trigger last March, he believes we’ve done very well and this is the moment we should say Malaysia Boleh. As a country that started a bit late, he believes Malaysia has been catching up very fast.
Wing shared that customers on the Yes 5G network currently experience an average speed of 577Mbps downlink with peak speeds of up to 1.5Gbps. He said 577Mbps is nothing to joke about and it is already faster than the home broadband network.
When questioned about how YTL Communications is making money as they are a private entity paying for a wholesale network, Wing said they are doing well. He explained that YTL Communications is running on an all-IP network from day one and until today remains the only all-IP network in the country. This means they do not have legacy baggage like other telcos which still have circuit switch-based 2G and the recently shut down 3G networks. When YTL launched their 4G LTE service in 2016, they were the first telco in Malaysia to offer Voice over LTE (VoLTE) nationwide while its competitors only started to roll out VoLTE widely last year.
To summarise, Wing said if you invest in the right technology and you know what you’re doing from an architecture standpoint, you can have a clean slate network that will drive the unit cost down, while the other competitors will have to deal with legacy baggage which makes it more challenging to bring the price down.
Wing iterated that the telco business is a scale business which requires you to manage your unit costs correctly. With a headcount of less than 1,000 people and operating on an all-IP modern network, he said YTL Communications can manage their unit cost at a level that other telcos can only dream of, therefore they can pass the savings back to consumers.
When asked about mass consumer adoption, Wing said Yes 5G currently supports over 100 models of smartphones except for Apple. Accessibility to devices is already there and it is their job to create awareness. He said 30% coverage is substantial coverage and they are driving awareness and channel distribution so that more people can have access to 5G. Yes 5G wants to ensure the price point is accessible, devices are available for free and now their job is to make sure they push the journey to as many people in Malaysia as possible.
At the moment, YTL Communications’ Yes 5G claims to have the cheapest and fastest unlimited 5G + 4G plan in the world with their Yes Infinite Plans. Starting from RM58/month, they offer users unlimited 5G and 4G data with no Fair Usage Policy (FUP) as well as unlimited calls. However, hotspot usage is capped at 10GB a month but users are able to opt for more hotspot quota by going for higher Infinite plans. On top of that, they are offering a variety of free 5G devices on a 36-month contract.
While Yes 5G remains the first and only telco to offer 5G services in Malaysia, its current nationwide 4G coverage isn’t as extensive as the major four telcos such as Celcom, Digi, Maxis and U Mobile. According to Opensignal’s report released in April 2022, Yes ties with Unifi Mobile for having the lowest 4G coverage experience score of 6.9 out of 10 points, while Celcom leads at 9.1 points. Yes is also ranked last for video and gaming experience, and the second last for voice app experience on the same report.
At the moment, none of the public listed telcos has announced the acceptance of DNB’s 5G access offer. Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul said the telcos will have until 31st August to agree on DNB terms or risk losing out on access to 5G.
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