Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on December 26, 2022 - January 1, 2023

If Malaysia’s 5G rollout could be summarised in one word, it would be “tumultuous”. From the setting up of Digital Nasional Bhd (DNB), the Ministry of Finance-owned special-purpose vehicle (SPV) that is undertaking the deployment of the 5G infrastructure and network nationwide, to the mobile network operators (MNOs) expressing dissatisfaction with the deployment of a single wholesale network (SWN), it felt like Malaysia was never going to ever get 5G connectivity.

Thankfully, DNB and the MNOs were able to reach a compromise in mid-2022 following extensive discussions, allowing for the deployment of 5G to take place among the rest of the MNOs.

Today, Malaysians have access to ultra-fast download speeds in some urban areas. Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) on behalf of unifi Mobile and YTL Communications Sdn Bhd on behalf of Yes — having struck an agreement with DNB in December last year — were the first two operators in the country to provide 5G access to their respective customers within coverage areas.

But there is still a lot more to be done on the back end to ensure that Malaysia’s 5G deployment is uninterrupted and remains inclusive in both urban and rural areas. Malaysia also needs to play catch-up as countries in the region are significantly ahead in their 5G journey. Infrastructure and hardware remain a sizeable hurdle as they are capital expenditure (capex) heavy.

Muniff Kamaruddin, chief technology officer of EdgePoint Infrastructure Sdn Bhd and CEO of EdgePoint Towers Malaysia, stresses that time is of the essence. Urbanites would be the first to get a taste of 5G, where the immediate focus will be on fast speeds and larger capacities. Rural folk might need to wait for a while as DNB’s rollout to the rest of the country would take a couple more years.

Nevertheless, affordability is key right now, from the packages that MNOs are offering to the setting up of infrastructure to fill connectivity pockets. For now, early adopters such as YTL are already providing pricing indicators that users can expect; however, the availability of reasonable 5G-compatible smartphones is another hindrance for users and smartphone pricing needs to stabilise.

“Just like previous technologies that came into the market like 3G and 4G, the price points will come down eventually. How we see it is that adoption is still dependent on the packages and affordability of the right devices,” he says.

“But the initial applications will be more focused on faster speeds because if you ask the younger generation, they want everything to be done fast. Later on, we will eventually move on to the other benefits such as ultra-low latency, as well as massive connectivity to IoTs (Internet of Things).”

The current 5G technology is deployed on non-standalone architecture (NSA), which means that the 5G network is still complemented with the 4G network. Muniff says this will be the mainstay for the next few years before 5G is available everywhere, after which a move to standalone architecture can happen.

“It’s in a standalone environment that enterprise and industrial applications will start to come in, because ultra-low latency enables that,” he explains.

“Right now, the interest from enterprises is more on setting up their own private network for the industrial use of 5G. For example, manufacturing companies in the past had to put in fibre in their premises because that’s the only way that they could get high throughput. But with 5G, they don’t really need to do that.”

“The early use cases will be in terms of surveillance and the usage of high-definition cameras and environmental control, which are all done in real time since 5G offers almost real-time capabilities with lags of less than four milliseconds. Eventually, low-latency applications will give rise to mission-critical applications, such as driverless vehicles.”

SAS Institute Malaysia managing director Cheam Tat Inn surmises that the key vertical industries to adopt 5G will be manufacturing, healthcare, automobile and utilities, where new business values will be unlocked to drive business growth. He observes many enterprises setting up innovation incubation teams and cross-industry collaboration projects to take advantage of the 5G network slicing and low latency’s unique proposition. Some are using data analytics at the edge to derive real-time data insights in support of mission-critical applications and business process automation.

Edge computing is a distributed com­puting paradigm that brings computation and data storage closer to the sources of data. This is expected to improve response times and save bandwidth.

“We will see more 5G-driven industry-specific ecosystem digital platforms being formed to optimise the 5G investments while pushing boundaries to create innovative enterprise solutions. Solutions will slowly evolve to cater for the advancement that 5G may bring but, at the same time, address the needs of the end customers who want reliable services, a smarter environment and the improvement that technology brings in everyday life,” says Cheam.

Artificial intelligence of things (AIoT) and edge AI are fast gaining momentum too because when combined with the 5G network that uses real-time data insights and decisioning, they have the potential to deliver improved business outcomes for autonomous vehicles monitoring, smart buildings energy-efficiency optimisation, smart cities secured real-time traffic and crowd density management, industrial process automation and predictive maintenance, to name a few.

Cheam says enterprises need to have already built a solid, robust data analytics capability to support industry co-creation and continually invest in research and development efforts. This will also support the explosion of data and the ability to unpack complexities to make meaningful use of the technological innovations, enabling customers to be successful in their digital aspirations.

Companies such as EdgePoint, which is involved in building out 5G infrastructure, will now be able to monetise existing locations. Muniff says there is no need to build redundant infrastructure when existing ones on the ground can be used, especially since building new sites is a tedious task.

To ensure the fast rollout of 5G, this strategy is the most conducive, which is what DNB has done to provide immediate upside to the ecosystem, says Muniff. On top of that, the 5G coverage radius is smaller compared with 3G and 4G, which means that more sites are needed to ensure good coverage.

“A certain percentage of sites that DNB has chosen are for co-locating using existing infrastructures. When looking at potential technologies, parties that want to make use of the 5G network can co-locate at our locations. Now, things like micro edge computing become interesting for us because there is a need to build out mini, on-the-go data centres closer to where the subscribers are.”

Muniff explains micro edge computing is computing capacity that is even closer to where the mobile phones and users are. With archaic architecture, data needs to be carried across to connection points, sometimes hundreds of kilometres away.

“Users will get to enjoy very low latency and take advantage of the capabilities that can come from 5G. It’s not just for MNOs but content providers as well.”

Critical focus on rural 5G deployment

The need for connectivity in rural areas has become essential now as people are realising the need to be connected for school, work, communities and even everyday tasks. The situation has since become critical when taking into consideration 5G deployment and its benefits for rural areas. But there are still gaps and challenges that need to be addressed.

Cheam points out that on the one hand, rural connectivity requires time, effort and significant investment to achieve the targets set. On the other hand, the sunsetting of the 3G network and infrastructure has caused deterioration to existing connectivity.

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has also put in place a platform for people to give feedback where bad connectivity is experienced, but more needs to be done to ensure key stakeholders are held accountable and responsible for bad quality of service, which impacts the country’s aim to be 5G-ready.

“Telcos are fined for poor quality of service or not meeting the service standards. Results carried out by the MCMC on quality audit must be made transparent to ensure there is improvement in the phase approach,” says Cheam.

But in rural areas, connectivity is more  of a communal affair and involves shared networks. EdgePoint’s Muniff believes it is because of the lack of fibre connectivity in certain areas that 5G is needed to harness the potential of small businesses.

“I fully understand the MCMC’s ambition with the Jalinan Digital Negara (Jendela) initiative but our view is quite straightforward: we have speed in terms of execution capabilities, whether it’s to deploy structures for the MNOs to realise Jendela’s ambition as quickly as they can or to improve the harmonisation of the various requirements needed to deploy structures.”

“It is a regulated industry and we have to comply with the requirements from the MCMC and the local authorities. At the onset of Jendela, it was recognised that harmonisation and simplification of the various approvals or recurrences of permits were really needed in order to push Jendela’s ambition.”

Muniff suggests a regulatory change to the MCMC’s Universal Service Provision (USP) fund allowing infrastructure to be leased instead of being built from the ground up, which incurs high capex. “People like us are able to help the government so that it doesn’t have to provide a large cash outlay to deploy infrastructure. There’s an opportunity to alleviate expenditure constraints on the government.”

Telehealth will be another area revolutionised by 5G. The Experiential Design Team (EDT) carried out a study with Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) to test the viability of remote physiotherapy sessions using virtual reality (VR) in rural areas. EDT’s creative director Fariz Hanapiah shares that rural folk have to travel for hours just to keep their doctor’s appointments.

With 5G, all that is needed is for the patient to have a VR headset to be connected with his or her doctor virtually to carry out physiotherapy exercises. “If we are able to deploy this nationwide, it will be a good story for people to understand the capabilities that 5G has, transcending the ability to watch videos in 4K and stream shows faster on Netflix,” he says.

EDT is currently part of the National Technology and Innovation Sandbox under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and in the midst of completing its clinical testing, after which, it can be commercialised if all goes well.

“[The VR headset] will be classified as a medical device, which means we need to get approvals from the Medical Device Authority and Sirim before we can deploy it. It’s slow and steady but we’re getting there.”

Presenting 5G capabilities through art

At this moment, the understanding of 5G among regular Joes and Janes is confined to shallow applications. Fariz says this is normal, especially since not many people have had the opportunity to use 5G in their daily lives. At EDT, he shares, the team has been working on VR and augmented reality (AR) applications that can be accessed by people daily.

“One of the things we want to do is map out the city of Kuala Lumpur using AR and other digital assets, where if people were to visit historical places such as Dataran Merdeka, they can see in front of them how the place looked in 1957.

“We can use archive footage from the National Archives and map things out so people can experience everything like it’s happening in front of them.”

But the issue Fariz is having is bandwidth because high-fidelity content needs more bandwidth for higher definition content, which will become available with 5G. Increased bandwidth, capacity and access to open-source data will also open up the space for digital creators to express themselves.

“For instance, if there is a smart city initiative, an interface can be created to show people how their data is being used and developers can play around with it to create meaningful digital displays. For example, using weather data to show the effects of climate change in the future, where all the user needs to do is perhaps scan a QR code and look at the street in front of him or her to see what the place will look like in 20 years,” he says.

Fariz believes AR and VR applications are dependent on the number of people who have the equipment. Affordability of devices has improved over the last five years — a PICO VR headset costs about RM1,700 for all the relevant capabilities installed to play games and interact with others.

But the price of the devices is not enough to encourage a higher adoption rate. The content and application of these devices will still be the determining factor and that will only happen once people understand the breadth and depth of 5G connectivity with these technologies.

Nevertheless, the company will still be advocating the use of VR technology for its clinical trial on remote physiotherapy. “Maintaining the infrastructure is not an easy task and the economic side of things needs to be considered as well — whether it is bringing in investments or creating cash flow or more job opportunities.”

“Our focus will be on 5G’s high-speed connectivity, bandwidth and capacity at rehabilitation centres so they can operate. After that, we will slowly expand it to the general public. That’s the way to gradually make it work and help people.”

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