Digi picks ZTE to upgrade its network nationwide to be 5G ready

Digi has announced that it will partner with ZTE Corporation for its Radio Access Network (RAN) modernisation. The yellow telco said that this is part of its continuous efforts to enhance its network capacity and to deliver an improved experience for its customers while ensuring that its network is ready for 5G.

Digi CTO Kesavan Sivabalan said, “We believe the use of modernised technology with the latest radio access solutions will deliver overall efficient network, with the speed, efficiency, and agility critical for our continuous day-to-day operations. This initiative will also give us a future-ready 5G network able to provide new and innovative services, and the significantly improved quality of experience.”

Commenting on the partnership, ZTE Malaysia Managing Director Steven Ge said “We are honored to be chosen as the RAN vendor for Digi. This continues our tradition of working together, which now reaches 10 years. We will continue to support Digi’s goal to connect customers through a high-quality network. Post modernisation, Digi will have a highly-efficient 5G-enabled network.”

According to Digi, the network modernisation exercise will upgrade their network with the latest technology evolution that supports higher throughput and lower latency. The new equipment has higher processing capabilities and will be able to support Dynamic Spectrum Sharing, multi Carrier Aggregation, higher order MIMO and cellular Internet of Things (C-IoT), to ensure future readiness and adoption of 5G.

It also added that the network upgrades will allow Digi to meet the government’s JENDELA plan ambition to provide widespread quality connectivity nationwide. Malaysia aims to increase nationwide 4G population coverage from 91.8% to 96.9% within phase 1 of JENDELA (2020-2022). The MCMC isn’t awarding new spectrum at the moment and telcos will need to improve their 4G coverage by optimising their existing spectrum.

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