Although 5G isn’t yet widely available, it’s coming!

This article will analyze the evolutionary situations of 5G in Southeast Asian Countries.

Indonesia

Anyone who attended the Asian Games in 2018 could have tried out 5G in Jakarta, Indonesia. A special Telkomsel SIM card was needed in order to connect to the network.

It’s unclear whether Indonesia will see commercial 5G begin to roll out in 2019 or 2020, or later, but a trial of this size was a great indicator that they’re on a track of some sort.

Thailand

Advanced Info Service (AIS), the country’s largest mobile phone operator, is testing 5G in Thailand but hasn’t indicated when they plan to go live with a commercial 5G network.

Singapore

StarHub announced in November 2018, that they, in partnership with Nokia, completed their first outdoor pilot of 5G on the 3.5 GHz frequency band. However, there’s no information on when StarHub will have a 5G network ready for Singaporean customers.

Philippines

The wireless communications company Smart has been testing 5G since 2016 and announced in June of 2018 the launch of 5G TehnoLab, their 5G innovation lab. Smart plans to have a 5G-ready network live for customers by 2020.

In November 2018, Smart rolled out their first 5G cell sites in the Philippines. They were erected in Makati Central Business District (Makati CBD) and at the Clark Freeport Zone in Pampanga.

In Smart’s 5G testing, they’ve managed to achieve speeds of over 14 Gb/s, and have completed a 5G-enabled video call.

Globe Telecom is another company on track to deploy 5G in the Philippines in the second quarter of 2019.

Malaysia

5G in Malaysia will likely start to be available in specific areas in 2020.

According to the MCMC (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission), which established a “national 5G Task Force” in 2018, a complete study and report on a 5G deployment in Malaysia will be available by September 2019.

The transmission on 5G creates high requirements for temperature environment, product reliability, capacity. Gigalight enables to meet 5G fronthaul carrying out the industrial upgrade for products in the past year.

Gigalight 10G industrial optical modules successfully win the 5G fronthaul market for Source Korean. Currently, Gigalight 10G industrial optical modules

are available such as 10G CWDM SFP, 10G DWDM SFP and so on.