5G Malaysia DNB

Last month, Maxis, Digi, U Mobile and Celcom have jointly revealed that they have submitted a proposal for the establishment of Dual Wholesale Networks (DWN) for 5G rollout in the country. On the same day, Communications and Multimedia Minister Annuar Musa said that his ministry and the Ministry of Finance will table a Cabinet Ministers’ memorandum to resolve the issues relating to Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB) “once and for all”.

At the time, the aim was to have the memorandum tabled in the first week of March but now, the minister has since provided a more specific date of 11 March. This comes from a tweet by the minister’s official Twitter account earlier today:

KKMM dan MOF telah melengkapkan siri “engagement” dgn pelbagai pihak mengenai roll out 5G.Memorandum Jemaah Menteri telah di siapkan dan di serah kpd Sekretariat. Ia dijangka di bawa pada 11hb mac utk keputusan.Semua pihak di minta tidak membuat spekulasi mengenainya. pic.twitter.com/ZBjjE7eNqZ

— Annuar Musa (@AnnuarMusa) March 3, 2022

Even though the confirmation only came last month, it has been known since late last year that the four biggest mobile telcos in the country are very much in favour of DWN instead of SWN. According to the original report, they apparently argueed that using the DWN model will not only mean a faster 5G rollout but also allow them to still compete against each other.

As the tabling is going to be one week behind the initial schedule, it looks like the country is finally getting a step closer to actually getting 5G rolled out throughout the country. Until then though, YTL Communications remains the only 5G telco in the country while TM who already signed up with DNB is still going through internal testing.