Recently, there has been a competition among various Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) to attract customers by offering roaming data plans that cover Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. While these plans were initially enabled for 5G NSA (Non-Standalone) trials in Singapore, it remains intriguing to determine if they can also access overseas networks in 5G NSA mode.
To explore this, we decided to sign up for one of these plans and put it to the test at the causeway outside City Square. Our initial connection automatically connected us to Maxis, but unfortunately, we were only able to access the outdated EDGE network instead of the expected 4G. The browsing experience was sluggish, reminiscent of the slow speeds we experienced in the 3G era.
Undeterred, we manually selected Celcom 4G as the network provider. Surprisingly, the connection established on the anchor band provided us with 5G NSA capabilities. However, when we attempted to load websites, the content failed to load. It felt as if we had a full signal but no access to data.
Not willing to give up just yet, we manually selected Digi 4G as our next option. This time, we successfully connected to Digi’s 5G NSA network, anchored on band 28 (700 MHz). Digi’s 5G NSA network is built on band 28, accompanied by 100 MHz of n78 band (3.5GHz), as implemented by DNB.
We conducted a speed test and were impressed with the results. It appeared that Digi did not impose speed restrictions on data roaming users. We achieved a speed of 480 Mbps, which is half the peak speed attainable with their local postpaid SIM cards. Nevertheless, this result is still remarkable.