Shortly after Maxis had signed an MoU with Huawei to accelerate the deployment of 5G networks in Malaysia, Maxis has officially commenced its 5G trials in Cyberjaya earlier this week. This makes Maxis the first operator to conduct live 5G trials in Malaysia and it will be running for a period of six months.
With the trials, Maxis hopes to provide a deeper analysis of 5G characteristics including the use of spectrum in higher bands, co-existence with current services, as well as use cases such as Gigabit high-speed Mobile Internet and UHD VR applications. According to Maxis, they have recorded download speeds close to 3Gbps during their trials.
According to Maxis CTO, Morten Bangsgaard, this marks a significant step for Maxis in the 5G journey. They have been accessing the technology and conducting demo trials in their labs over the past few years and they are already upgrading their transport network to support these gigabit speeds, while at the same time, virtualising their core network elements for flexibility and scalability for the capacity demands of the technology. He added that Maxis was the first to bring 4G in Malaysia and they are excited to be doing it again with 5G.
With 5G, users can expect faster speeds of up to 10X higher than 4G, lower latency and higher capacity to support more devices. This will open up new 5G capabilities which include autonomous driving, smart manufacturing, eHealth, personal AI assistants and smart city initiatives.
