5G officially became available in December 2021, with YTL Communications Sdn Bhd (YES) being the first telco company in the country to offer 5G services to consumers. Since then, all other major telcos have started offering 5G services, with Maxis being the latest to do so.
Despite being late to deploy 5G to the public, Malaysia has achieved an incredible achievement, according to Ookla Insights’s report.
Ookla reports that the Asia Pacific region outperformed the top five European economies in terms of median download performance. Malaysia and South Korea emerged as the frontrunners, achieving impressive speeds of over 500 Mbps. Malaysia reported a remarkable median download performance of 512.10 Mbps,
In Malaysia, the government adopted a nationwide single wholesale network (SWN) and established Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB) in 2021 to construct and operate the 5G network infrastructure, providing wholesale 5G services to mobile network operators.
On the other hand, South Korea has long been a pioneer in mobile technology and boasts one of the highest internet penetration rates globally. Its early commitment to 5G development allowed South Korea to be the first market in the world to launch a commercial 5G network.
Despite launching 5G three and half years after South Korea, we have caught up to their performance level.
Meanwhile, during the same period, Singapore, India, New Zealand, China, and Australia achieved median 5G download speeds surpassing 200 Mbps. Among the mentioned European countries, only France recorded speeds above 200 Mbps, whereas Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, and Spain experienced median download speeds below 150 Mbps.
Both Malaysia and South Korea have demonstrated their dominance in 5G performance compared to other countries in their respective regions, and this superiority is also reflected in the ranking of their capital cities.
Among the selected cities, Seoul, the capital of South Korea, secured the top spot with a remarkable median download speed of 533.95 Mbps and upload speed of 46.54 Mbps. Similarly, Kuala Lumpur, closely followed with an impressive median download speed of 523.44 Mbps and upload speed of 63.88 Mbps.
However, Malaysia’s 5G availability (the percentage of users on 5G-capable devices that spend most of the time with access to 5G networks), is at the last second place, with only 8.6% availability.
