Malaysia really kicked 5G deployment into high gear with the introduction of Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB) being the single wholesaler of 5G. I’m not going into the details of that as I am only here to test the current situation of 5G here in Malaysia. All the testing shown in this article is done on the 22nd of December 2021.
Here’s my entire journey testing 5G on that day, in a video format. It’s a little awkward since I’m filming in the car and I don’t usually do these types of videos. But hey, it’s a special occasion. 🤷♂️
I chose a rather weird location, honestly. There is a 5G antenna beside SIRIM Bukit Jalil, and I tested 5G at those shoplots around The Earth Bukit Jalil, which is right beside the aforementioned SIRIM branch.
I whipped out the Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro (still a fantastic phone to this day) because this is the only phone that we have at that time that is actually certified to be used with 5G. I’m not sure why there is a list of currently supported devices, though. I mean – I have a bunch of 5G-ready phones with me and none of them work – only the Mi 10T Pro worked.
I also got the YES 5G SIM card for RM30. Please bear in mind that this SIM card is curated for the reason of testing 5G. Anyone can head on to YES’s website and buy one, but it’s not meant for daily-driven as there are capped speeds for 4G network.
With my YES 5G SIM card at hand (they’re the only telco that actually offers 5G to consumers right now), I opened up the Speedtest app by Ookla and tapped “go”. What I saw after that was a rollercoaster of reaction.
First, it was the ping. It’s good. Then, it’s the download speed. Hitting gigabit speeds is nothing short of amazing, honestly. Then comes the disappointing upload speeds. Seriously, about 130Mb/s upload?
I did the same test multiple times and I got similar results.
I also tested out the 5G test while hunting for that location. The results were wildly varied. There was one test that I did in front of a traffic light that completed the download test, but I took a turn before the upload test commenced, and the 5G connection dropped entirely and just failed the speed test.
But I’ll have to clarify that the test we did is pretty much unscientific and there are a lot of factors at play here. A few that I can think of are:
- We only have one phone with us that is actually compatible with DNB’s infrastructure (is it theirs?)
- We only have YES’s SIM card to test. Perhaps things will be different with other telcos
This is all that we have to show right now. It’s a glimpse into the 5G future that we’ve been promised.
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