Despite having a total of 5,873 5G sites as of September 30 and service reaching 70.2 percent coverage in populated areas, the adoption level remains low at just 7.4%.
Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil said a total of 2.49 million 5G service subscriptions have been recorded to date, equivalent to a 7.4 percent adoption rate.
“Until now, six mobile service providers have offered 5G commercial plans, namely CelcomDigi, Maxis, U Mobile, Telekom Malaysia, YTL Communications, and Yoodo,” he said during a question and answer session in the Dewan Rakyat today.
Fahmi said the implementation of the 5G network is being carried out by Digital Nasional Berhad with the target of developing 7,509 5G sites nationwide.
Among the reasons for low adoption have been due to pricing and device availability, BusinessToday spoke to consumers and the feedback has been mostly on the higher package rates. Telcos are offering 5G plans with a higher ‘plan switch’ pricing which is surprising due to DNB’s promise that pricing will be lower than 4G.
It should be noted during Parliament sitting on May 2023 Communications and Digital Ministry Deputy Minister Teo Nie Ching told Dewan Rakyat that one of the conditions determined by the Cabinet is that the tariff price offered by Entity B for the second network cannot exceed that of the current tariff [under DNB].”
Teo noted that DNB’s current wholesale price offered to telecommunication companies (telcos) is RM30,000 per Gbps (gigabit per second) a month — or 13 sen per GB (gigabyte).
“The condition we will set for the second entity is that [their wholesale] price can be lower than the current price or the same, but cannot be higher. That is why we believe that the second network will create competition between the two entities, and because of that, consumers will be able to benefit,” Teo said
Fahmi told BT recently, that the Prime Minister will announce a special 5G adoption package during Budget 2024 for consumers and enterprises, which is supposed to spur higher adoption rates.
