China first started rolling out 5G stations around 2019.
4 years later, in July 2023, China announced that they have exceeded its target for 5G base stations six months ahead of time, having built 3 million of them by the end of June 2023 that are connected to 676 million mobile phones and over 2.12 billion users of mobile Internet of Things (IoT) terminals, or devices connected to the internet through a 5G network – including smart home appliances, wearables and industrial sensors.
In the 3 months to June 2023, China added more than 600,000 stations compared with 100,000 for US in 2019-2021.
The government of China also announced that across the board,
- the average price of a 5G module for industrial application in China has dropped below 400 yuan (RM253), while the energy consumption of each base station has fallen by more than 20% compared with the early deployment period
- adoption and integration of 5G technology had spread to more than 40 sectors of China’s economy, including industry, healthcare, education and transport
- A large number of 5G-powered digital workshops and smart factories had been built across the country, where productivity had risen by more than 30%
- The product development cycle of factories has been shortened by an average of 20.7% Production efficiency has been increased by an average of 34.8%
- The average defective rate of products had been reduced by more than 27%, and carbon emissions cut by over a 20% on average
- In the first half of 2023, the revenue of emerging businesses such as internet data centres, big data, cloud computing and IoT increased by 19.2% year-on-year, driving telecommunications service revenue growth by 3.7 percentage points
- 5G is helping hundreds of thousands Chinese enterprises in more than 100 cities and over 1,000 industrial parks to improve their global competitiveness in the global market
- It is also supporting the development of smart cities with real-time monitoring and control of traffic flow, energy consumption and environmental conditions, to help optimise resource allocation and improve the quality of life
The figures suggest that China is leaving the United States far behind in the 5G connectivity race which explains why the US is increasingly worried about China.
In fact, in March 2023, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced plans to build 2.9 million 5G base stations by year-end of 2023.
The number of 5G base stations determines the coverage and capacity of the network enabling increasingly new applications and services that require high-speed, low-latency connectivity, such as autonomous vehicles, remote surgery and smart factories.
Comparatively, where are we……..
Malaysia was supposed to be one of the first countries to roll out 5G in the Southeast Asian region with a target to launch commercial services in late 2020.
But it has been on a roller coaster journey on its 5G rollout plans.
The discussion around 5G has been ongoing in Malaysia for a few years now but pilot tests only commenced in 2019 with the intention to have 5G in selected cities by the end of 2020.
Things however took a turn when there was a change of government midway.
A government entity, Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB) established in early March 2021, came up with a study claiming the most effective approach will be by deploying the Single Wholesale Network (SWN) system, a concept not well accepted by the country’s biggest telco operators.
DNB will offer 5G as a wholesale network service to other telecommunication companies.
The first rollout of the 5G services in Malaysia eventually was launched on 15 December 2021.
Ericsson was appointed in July 2021 as the sole network equipment provider at a cost of RM4 billion as well as to build the infrastructure estimated at a cost of RM11 billion.
DNB promises to deliver 500 5G sites by end-2021.
During the press conference held on 7 December 2022, the Communications and Digital Minister shared that DNB has deployed 2,715 5G cell sites as of 31 October 2022 with 36% 5G population coverage while in Parliament later in March 2023, in response to a query by an MP, the Minister said as of 31 December 2022, DNB has spent a total of RM1.889 billion in which 3,906 of the planned 7,509 5G sites have been completed.
As reported, in the 3 months to June 2023, China added more than 600,000 5G stations.
Malaysia planned to have 7,509 5G stations for the whole country and have been talking and planning for this since 2019.
And after 4 years, the country is not even halfway through in building and completing the 7,509 5G stations.
As PM6 had warned in Oct 2021, the country risks losing trillions of ringgit should DNB fail in its plans to roll out 5G to the whole country.
At present, it looks like the country is heading that way.
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