Celcom Axiata Berhad, an Axiata Group company with around 12 million customers, and Ericsson announced what they claimed is Malaysia’s first 5G trial, and the first 5G trial to be conducted on the 28 GHz band in South East Asia.
The trial in Malaysia featured 5G radio prototypes and achieved a peak throughput of up to 18 Gbit/s with latency as low as 3 ms (milliseconds). The trial also demonstrated advanced 5G use cases such as robotic control, connected environment, virtual reality, Internet of Things (IoT) applications and 4K video streaming.
Ericsson noted that the demonstration follows the signing of a 5G memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Celcom in February 2017, which provided for a joint partnership to evaluate opportunities for 5G and IoT in Malaysia. Through the MoU, Celcom and Ericsson will aim to support technology development in Malaysia and the government Digital Malaysia initiative for the creation of a digital economy by 2020.
Celcom’s recently announced ‘journey to 5G’ strategy will involve the deployment of key technologies such as 4 x 4 MIMO and 256QAM and is intended to provide customers with data speeds up to 400 Mbit/s. Celcom also plans to deploy IoT technology.
Ericsson noted that the 5G lab trial demonstration was attended by Yang Berhormat Dato’ Jailani Johari, Deputy Minister of Communications and Multimedia, and Yang Berbahagia Dato’ Sri Dr. Halim Shafie, Chairman of Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission at Menara Celcom in Kuala Lumpur.
Celcom is Malaysia’s leading data network provider, with nearly 12 million customers, operating national 2G, 3G and 4G LTE networks that cover 98% of the population. Celcom is part of the Axiata Group, a major telecommunications group serving around 300 million customers in 10 Asian markets.
