If you've been following the news on 5G in Malaysia, you're probably aware of the big players involved. Currently, Ericsson is the only company providing the core network infrastructure for implementing 5G in our country. But it seems like Nokia also wants to be involved this year.

A report yesterday recently revealed that 50 telecommunications towers will be built in Sabah starting from this year. Quoting Roslan Mohamad, Head of the Sabah State Office for the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, the report says that each of the communications towers are estimated to cost RM1.7 to RM1.8 million with total costs coming to RM290 million. They are expected to help support 5G telecommunications and improve 4G coverage.

To kick off the year 2020, the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has released an official final report about the expected rollout period for 2020 and allocation of spectrum bands for mobile broadband services in Malaysia. From the report, the organization has identified 700MHz, 3.5GHz and 26/28GHz band as the necessary foundation as we head towards 5G. But what does this really mean?

Opensignal are back with their Mobile Network Experience Report for Malaysia September 2019 with the clear winner being Celcom with awards in the Latency Experience, 4G Availability and best Video Experience. Maxis maintained and solidified their position as "King of Speed" by getting awards in both Upload and Download speed while U Mobile improved leaps and bounds with 75% faster download speeds. Surprise contender Unifi stepped up offering Best Voice App experience (for when you make calls using apps like WhatsApp and so forth) but also improved in terms of video experience as well.

Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia recently made a visit to Huawei Technologies’ Beijing office where he was warmly welcomed by Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of Huawei. Looking much like an endorsement from Malaysia and Huawei on 5G development within Malaysia, the visit comes hot on the heels of various 5G trials within the country along with the 5G Malaysia Showcase.

We all thought 5G would never come to Malaysia, at least not in the next 5 years at least. Well, we may just be wrong as 5G pioneer testing will be coming to Malaysia in April starting with Putrajaya and Cyberjaya.

Today, Huawei is proud to announce two new products that will usher in the new age of Internet connectivity. The first one is the 5G multi-mode chipset Balong 5000 and the other, the Huawei 5G CPE Pro as the first commercial 5G device. With this in hand, wireless connections between our smartphones, home appliances, office, vehicles and others at one-go will be made possible in the future.

During their recent global analyst summit in Shenzhen, Huawei showed a slide teasing their first Huawei 5G mobile hotspot set for Q2 of 2019. They also revealed what could be their first 5G smartphone, which is presumed to be the Huawei Mate 30 in the second half of 2019 which also indicates when Malaysia and other countries could start seeing the full implementation of 5G networks.

Huawei recently received the award of "Biggest Contribution to 5G Development" at the 5G World Summit for their efforts in creating the next generation in high-speed mobile Internet and networks. Standardization of 5G networks is expected to begin next year with the goal of reaching 10Kbps throughput and 1ms latency to become prevalent by 2020. Huawei is currently laying the foundation for this by introducing new networking technologies designed specifically to increase the effectiveness and speed of 5G networks. Since 2014, Huawei released the world’s highest throughput test bed in high band (above 6GHz) and low band (below 6GHz), with total throughput reaching 115Gbps and 10.32Gbps respectively. In the academic field, Huawei has contributed over 180 papers on 5G in close collaboration with leading universities such as New York University and Harvard University. Huawei also plays an important role in many standard organizations and industry alliances such as 5GPPP, IMT2020, 5GIC, 5GMF and NGMN, defining 5G together with all industry partners. Here's what Huawei had to say about it:

“We would like to take this opportunity to thank the judging committee, all industry colleagues as well as Informa for this first 5G award. It’s a great recognition of Huawei’s efforts towards 5G innovation, standardization contribution and industry collaboration. Since we started 5G research in 2009, Huawei has achieved significant breakthroughs in end-to-end 5G system innovation, including the new air interface technologies, new architecture and the world’s highest throughput test bed. We promise to continue our efforts towards contributing to a global unified standard and achieving a win-win industry chain in close collaboration with the whole industry."Chaobin Yang, CMO of Huawei Wireless Product Line