This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on January 10, 2020

CYBERJAYA: The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) says the roll-out of fifth-generation (5G) networks in Malaysia — expected to be commercially available by the third quarter of this year — has to be done immediately for “national survival”, given the rapid development of the global 5G ecosystem.

“The 5G ecosystem readiness is way faster than what we had anticipated in June last year. We feel Malaysia should not wait or be left behind because we have been progressive in the process of the four generations [of networks] in the past,” MCMC chairman Al-Ishsal Ishak told the media in a briefing on 5G demonstration projects here yesterday.

He added that all stakeholders, including the regulator, government, and industry players, recognised that Malaysia is behind in terms of broadband services. Malaysia, he also noted, ranked fifth in Southeast Asia in terms of broadband average download speed, and third in terms of fixed broadband average download speed.

Citing the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research’s (MIER) report on the economic impact of 5G implementation in Malaysia, Al-Ishsal said it is predicted that the implementation of 5G would contribute up to RM12.7 billion between 2021 and 2025 to the nation’s economy, and create more than 39,000 new job opportunities during the period.

Al-Ishsal reiterated that the 5G spectrum bands will be rolled out by the third quarter this year.

The allocation of the 5G spectrums (5G beauty contest) will be done via open tender to be called by the second quarter, he said, adding that the details and criteria will be revealed later. A single consortium of multiple licensees will be selected via this tender.

In the meantime, discussions and negotiations with necessary stakeholders, including industry players, regulator, and service providers, will be conducted to set out the criteria for the consortium before the end of the first quarter, said Ishsal.

The award to a single consortium is to lower capital expenditure by preventing infrastructure duplication, as seen in the roll-out of previous generations of telecommunication networks, Al-Ishsal said, and that the country’s telecommunications companies are now “taking sharing to the next level”.

“We don’t know where we will end, but at the start of this journey, we are clearly together. There is a lot of hope that we can reduce the cost of deployment and ensure that our 5G networks are better than our 4G networks, as we are now working together in a collaborative manner,” he added.

An estimated RM7 billion to RM8 billion in capital expenditure over four to five years is required for 5G deployment.

It was reported earlier that MCMC had identified the 700MHz, 3.5GHz and 26/28GHz bands for the initial roll-out of 5G in the country, and will be managed by a consortium formed by multiple licensees.