Stranger things in Malaysia’s 5G rollout
A straightforward public project falls hostage to elite wrangling.
Why is Malaysian PM Anwar Ibrahim impatient about the slow deployment of the second 5G network? Heck, we can’t even solve decent 4G connectivity in the city.
But here we are, talking about 5G because some people want to have a piece of the pie.
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When Malaysia announced its 5G ambition, the country was ahead of its peers, even Singapore — Malaysia announced its ambitions in 2018 while its southern neighbour went public with 5G in 2020.
Politics, however, got in the way for Malaysia and while we are past the tumultuous periods of 2018-2022, some public projects such as the 5G rollout remained on the radar of the county’s corporate and political elite.
Despite the first rollout being comfortably in the hands of government-owned Digital Nasional Bhd (DNB) and its project partner, Swedish infra giant Ericsson.
But, before we get to the core problems, let’s first tackle the recent ownership change in telco U Mobile, the recipient of the second 5G rollout.