Malaysian businesses stand to gain greater flexibility and stronger bargaining power from the country’s two separate 5G technology stacks, economists told NST, with the split also supporting the digital economy.
Access to different technology platforms lets companies pick the systems that best fit how they operate, as spending on 5G connections, artificial intelligence and other digital services climbs.
International Islamic University Malaysia economist Noorihsan Mohamad said the gains go beyond having more options on the table.
“Keeping different ecosystems available can broaden supplier choice, strengthen bargaining power and accommodate businesses with different operational and procurement requirements,” he said.
The flexibility rests on the two networks staying genuinely different. Asrul Hadi Abdullah Sani, associate vice-president at The Asia Group, said clear governance, transparent procurement rules and safeguards should keep Digital Nasional Bhd and the second network technologically apart, Malay Mail reported.
“Malaysia’s strategic flexibility depends not only on having two 5G networks, but on ensuring that the two networks do not converge around the same technology dependencies,” he said. Public assurances were helpful but not enough on their own, he added.
Noorihsan said businesses still need to know the systems they buy into will keep being supported.
“Uncertainty about future support or regulatory treatment can make postponing investment a rational decision,” he said.
Global Asia Consulting analyst Samirul Ariff Othman warned that losing either network, and the supplier base built around it, could push costs up. Complex industrial systems cannot be shifted from one network to another quickly or cheaply, he said.
Noorihsan added that money spent on customised systems, the work of connecting them and staff training is hard to recover once a company has settled into one supplier environment. Contracts should spell out service performance, support periods, security updates and who pays to move systems across, he said.
The two networks run on different technology partners. Digital Nasional Bhd built its network with Sweden’s Ericsson, while U Mobile picked China’s Huawei and ZTE for the second.
A March report by ABI Research set out the wider economic case for 5G beyond consumer connections, pointing to enterprise and public-sector use. Keeping both a Western and a China-aligned technology camp open also protects the country’s ability to take in advances in artificial intelligence and chipsets, the firm said.
Both sides were put on show during visits to DNB’s My5G Portal and Huawei’s AI Lab and Innovation Centre on 12 Oct. The visits formed part of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia conference, “Realising an AI Nation”.
At DNB, demonstrations covered industrial work driven by 5G: a model vehicle steered remotely from another room, and body cameras sending live footage to a command centre. Factories, ports and mines are the kinds of sites where that real-time link matters.
Huawei’s centre covered a wider spread of AI, computing, cloud and storage tools, including software for spotting fraud, planning transport routes and supporting clinical work. Its OpenLab lets partners test applications on Huawei’s AI and computing platforms.
Malaysia has already run several enterprise trials. Radio Televisyen Malaysia used DNB’s standalone 5G network for a live-broadcast proof of concept during the 2024 National Day parade. Work with DNB, Ericsson, eMooVit, Scania and SKF Malaysia has looked at driverless transport, fleet management and smart manufacturing.
