Maxis has issued a statement to clarify that it is in favour of competition and is fully aligned with the government’s decision on the 5G delivery model. The statement was in response to Channel News Asia’s (CNA) recent report on Malaysia’s 5G rollout stalemate. The report attributed a quote by one of its staff members which the telco says does not represent the company’s position.
In the original article, CNA quoted a senior executive from Maxis saying that the economics at this time don’t stack up and maybe the best option would be to work on a solution using DNB’s current infrastructure.
Here’s Maxis’ statement on its position:
Maxis is always supportive of competition and is fully aligned with the Government’s decision on the 5G delivery model. We are ready to build another 5G network and have recently showcased the capabilities of a 5G-Advanced (5.5G) network supported by Malaysia’s Ministry of Communications and the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission.
Maxis
A few months ago, Maxis kicked off Malaysia’s first 5G-Advanced (5.5G) technology trial at KLCC with Huawei. The green telco demonstrated peak speeds of over 8Gbps and showcased several use cases which take advantage of 5.5G’s ultra-high bandwidth and millisecond latency. Maxis and Huawei also claimed to be the first to conduct a 5.5G technology trial in Southeast Asia.
Among all the major telcos, Maxis is the last operator to sign up for 5G access with Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB) and it only started offering commercial 5G services in August 2023. In December 2023, it was among the 5 major telcos to sign a share subscription agreement (SSA) to acquire a collective 70% stake in DNB.
As highlighted in CNA’s report, it appears that discussions between DNB and the majority of telcos have stalled due to deep mistrust and transparency concerns. The due diligence process was supposed to be concluded by the end of January but it is currently still ongoing.
In addition, the government announced in May 2023 that it will transition from a 5G single wholesale network to a Dual Network model by early 2024 once DNB achieves 80% 5G population coverage by the end of 2023. Despite DNB achieving its 5G coverage targets, there’s still no clear indication or timeline towards the establishment of a second 5G network.
This would be the second attempt by the government to get telcos to acquire a stake in the state-owned 5G network. In October 2022, four telcos – Celcom, Digi, YTL Communications and TM executed their share subscription agreements to acquire a collective 65% stake. After the government announced the policy shift towards a dual network model, publicly listed telcos- CelcomDigi and TM, terminated their respective equity deal with DNB.
