Celcom and Ericsson conduct Malaysia's first 5G trial

With the recent launch of the premier digital hub of the world's first Digital Free Trade Zone and Kuala Lumpur Internet City, Malaysia envisions to be the epicentre of South-East Asia's Internet economy.

This will drive Malaysia to become one of the world's largest purpose-built digital hub for technology giants and leading startups from around the globe. 5G comes in and plays a key role in ensuring not only efficiency, but also to open a window of opportunity for digital players. Ultimately, 5G will be a solid foundation in creating a strong ecosystem to enable innovation.

Celcom chief executive officer Michael Kuehner said Celcom was always committed to developing and continuing the evolution of its network with the latest technologies and to bring the best digital experience to Malaysians.

“5G is very important to Celcom as it will support the development and meet the communication needs of consumers and digitisation of various industries. It is critical that we explore this new generation technology and its capabilities with global partners like Ericsson," he said.

Todd Ashton, the president of Ericsson Malaysia and Sri Lanka, described the collaboration with Celcom as a further demonstration of Ericsson's support for Malaysia on its journey towards 5G, following on the success of the Innovation Centre for 5G set up last year with Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.

"Together with partners like Celcom, we will study and test this new technology to capture the full potential of 5G for consumers, business users and entire industries in the country," he said.

Kuehner said a lot more trials need to be conducted, from the aspect of technicalities, as well as, the ongoing discussion with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission on the regulatory aspect.

The full roll-out of the network to consumers in Malaysia was expected between 2020 and 2025, while global consumers could experience it as early as February 2018 during the Olympic Winter Games in South Korea and the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2020.

The first generation mobile network (1G) was all about voice. 2G was about voice + texting. 3G was about voice + texting + data. 4G was everything in 3G but faster. 5G will be something totally different as It will deliver:

●          Up to 100 times faster data rates: instant access to services and applications

●          Network latency lowered by a factor of five:use cases in areas such as intelligent

            transport and remote machinery

●          Mobile data volumes expanded by a factor of 1,000

●          Ten times better battery life: remote sensors and more sustainable networks