KUALA LUMPUR: Ericsson, Sweden's networking and telecommunications giant, will continue to support Malaysia's communications service providers to evolve seamlessly from the fourth generation (4G) of broadband cellular network to 5G, leveraging on its technology leadership and global expertise.
Ericsson Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh president David Hägerbro said it was supporting 85 live 5G deployments across 42 countries globally with 136 commercial 5G contracts.
"Networks in Malaysia need to evolve to address the growing data traffic. The current networks will only be able to address the consumer demand for data services to a point.
"Telecom networks will have to be upgraded and evolved. 5G is inherently more cost-efficient as it enables massive reductions in cost per gigabyte, almost by a factor of 10," he told the New Straits Times recently.
Malaysia recently announced the National Digital Infrastructure Plan (Jendela) to phase out 3G and strengthen 4G coverage, which would ultimately transition towards the rolling out of one public 5G network by the end of 2021.
Hägerbro said telco should move fast in addressing the infrastructure and technology requirements, taping new use cases across mobile broadband, internet of thing (IoT) and mission-critical applications.
"First and foremost, 5G must be viewed as a critical part of national infrastructure – every bit as vital as energy and water. Malaysia has an opportunity to become one of the early adopters of 5G," he added.
Other markets in the region namely Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines had already commenced 5G deployments.
"Malaysia needs to continue to make investments in 4G networks in the country to enhance the experience of customers. 4G will need to leverage to address rural connectivity as well. We continue to work with service providers in Malaysia towards providing 4G coverage in the country," he said.
Hägerbro said 5G was a platform for innovation, serving both consumers and enterprises as they would get to enjoy improved and uninterruptible broadband connectivity at speeds that they never would have imagined before.
"5G networks are being rolled out faster than expected, and the focus is initially on consumers and bringing capacity to networks. With each mobile generation, not only performance has increased, but also pace of adoption has increased (time to market) and price per gigabit continued to decrease," he said.
Hägerbro said Ericsson had been driving the 5G innovation that can contribute to the development of the 5G infrastructure in Malaysia.
"The Ericsson Radio System hardware is 5G-ready since 2015 and can be used also for 5G NR, including standalone, with a remote software installation. In total, we have shipped 6.0 million 5G-ready (hardware) radios to our customers since 2015, which gives us and our customers a unique advantage.
"The Ericsson Radio System is currently the most installed 5G-ready radios in the industry and enables the fastest migration of our customers to 5G and protects their previous investments," he said.
Locally, he said Ericsson had partnered with Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) to establish the first innovation centre on 5G technology - the Innovation Centre for 5G (IC5G), located at UTM's Kuala Lumpur Campus.
The main objective of the IC5G was to provide a platform to facilitate research linkages, trade and information exchange to work on joint research projects and realise the impact of 5G on industries and society.
"Four key collaboration area between Ericsson and UTM includes learning, research, visits or events and industry testing and commercialisation," he said.
In 2017, Ericsson had partnered with Celcom Axiata Bhd to perform Malaysia's first-ever 5G trial, pioneering the evolution of the nation's telecommunications technology.
He said it was the first 5G trial conducted on the 28GHz band in Southeast Asia.
Meanwhile, Ericsson has powered the first 5G hologram call in Malaysia as well as showcased a 5G connected autonomous Car at the 5G showcase event in Putrajaya organised by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) in 2019.
"The competence and capability, which we bring to the development of 5G in Malaysia are recognised by industry analysts," he said.
Ericsson was recently named as a Leader in the 2021 Magic Quadrant for 5G Network Infrastructure for Communications Service Providers (CSPs) report by Gartner.
"Ericsson also ranks highest in the 5G network infrastructure market on the latest Frost Radar, leveraging its current leadership in the 4G network infrastructure market," he said.
Hägerbro said Ericsson would continue to invest in academia-industry partnership in contributing to the development of the 5G industry in Malaysia.
The UTM-Ericsson IC5G was also the research and development (R&D) centre in 5G technology for the South East Asia region, featuring 5G innovations, a 5G research lab as well a 5G learning space.
"Ericsson Malaysia and UTM will continue to collaborate to upskill and nurture a future generation of young professionals and 5G-ready graduates that will be able to help drive Malaysia's digital ambitions.
"We also plan to strengthen the collaboration with UTM and startup ecosystem to accelerate 5G commercialisation for consumers and enterprise in Malaysia," he said.
With over 55 years of history in Malaysia, Ericsson's focus is on consumer services bundling – virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) for entertainment and education.
For many telecom service providers, he said it would vital to building out fixed-wireless access as an access technology for broadband using 5G.
Fixed wireless access (FWA) has gained traction globally with about 180 million FWA connections will be installed through 2026, representing about 650 million individuals having access to a fixed wireless broadband connection, according to Ericsson Mobility Report, published in November 2020.
"We can see that many industry use case applications can be created or enhanced by 5G due to low latency promoting safer environment with robotics and this year, we see trials to continue for industries.
"The expectations across industries are that the ramp-up of 5G-enabled use cases is likely to happen later and to be distributed across industries," he said.
Hägerbro said industries had taken longer to move into more sophisticated digitalisation use cases, as they were still pushing basic functionality.
"We examined 10 industries and healthcare now represents the largest addressable market opportunity, followed by manufacturing, energy and utilities and automotive.
"There is also a potential for new revenues coming from industry digitalisation. Enterprise and industry use cases empowered by 5G will open up for new business opportunities for operators," he said.
Ericsson report revealed that the addressable industry digitalisation market for service providers could grow to about US$700 billion by the end of 2030.
"When it comes to Malaysia, manufacturing, energy/utilities, healthcare and public safety sectors represent the biggest opportunity for 5G in Malaysia," he added.