U Mobile kicks off 5G consumer live trial at Berjaya Times Square

U Mobile has launched its Fast Forward with U Mobile 5G trial at Berjaya Times Square. The live trial will run until the end of 2020 and it enables customers to experience 5G first hand at a shopping mall. This is the first 5G consumer live trial in Malaysia.

The live 5G NSA (Non-Standalone) network trial is done in partnership with ZTE and it uses 100MHz bandwidth on the 3.5GHz spectrum. According to U Mobile, all SIMs including prepaid have been provisioned for 5G which enables its users with 5G devices to enjoy the high speed network. At the moment, it supports the Huawei P40 series, Mate 30 Pro 5G and the Nova 7 SE. More 5G phones will be supported soon.

U Mobile has been granted spectrum to run the trial network at Berjaya Times Square. It covers 3 floors – LG, G and Level 1. On Speedtest, we managed to get 900Mbps – 1Gbps for download and 60Mbps – 100Mbps for upload with less than 20ms ping on a Huawei P40 Pro 5G.

[ UPDATE 10/09/2020 12:00 ] According to U Mobile, users can access the network at no extra charge but it will utilise data from their existing data quota. Users are able to enjoy full speeds but they are subject to applicable speed caps depending on their rate plan. This means if you’re on a Giler Unlimited GX30 or GX38 prepaid plan, your download speeds are still limited to 6Mbps.

According to the telco, they hope to gather key learnings to ensure a better rollout of 5G when it’s commercially available. The Malaysian government has yet to allocate 5G spectrum for operators and it appears that commercial 5G rollout may only happen in 2021.

To celebrate the 5G live trial launch, U Mobile is having a promo where they are giving away a Huawei Band 4 (worth RM139) and Wireless Charging Case (worth RM289) when you purchase a Huawei P40 series device. The Huawei P40 5G is offered from RM59/month on the UPackage instalment plan.