For most readers from Asia, ASEAN should be a familiar term. For readers outside the region, ASEAN is the name that brings together ten Southeast Asian states – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – into one organisation.
While most countries have their own implementation time line for 5G deployment, residents of different countries will envy the other, why we still lag behind others in implementation.
While a lot of factors are involved in implementation 5G countrywide, we also need to consider the land size of the country.
According to user submitted 5G data points through the app nperf.com (app runs in the background of Android or iPhone), Thailand is leading the pack, with almost 95% coverage in the country’s capital and rural areas.
As for other countries, coverage is scattered and mainly cover the major cities and tourist attraction.
As for Singapore, Singtel claim it has achieve 95% coverage while M1/Starhub aims to have > 99% coverage by end of 2022, 3 years ahead of schedule. Singtel seems to be using a hybrid 5G NSA and SA while M1 adopt a pure 5G solution 5G NR. Starhub seems to have a hybrid of both 5G SA and NSA (apparently Giga, it’s subsidiary brand can connect to 5G NSA). As for SIMBA, there is not much news but they have 5G NSA trial going on at Vivocity, PLQ mall, Marina Bay sands and Great World City. SIMBA will have a true 5G solution using n1 band. All 4 telcos have mmwave but are yet to announce any official news on availability to the general public.
As for Malaysia, it seems that only YES, one of the telco are pushing 5G very hard. it seems to be using a 5G NSA implementation and speeds are pretty good, reaching 1.2 Gbps in speedtest.
To get 5G working, both telcos and phone manufacturers need to provision it to work. If you were to buy a parallel imported phone which the telcos don’t sell, there is a high chance it won’t work. 5G plans are also not cheap and issues still need to be ironed out. The list of phones supported are also limited to some major brands and models.
So, will you subscribe to 5G ? Comment below.
