Malaysian telco YTL Communications launched 5G Advanced services on Thursday, starting in the Klang Valley, making it the first commercial operator in the country to offer live 5G-A.
YTL – which launched the service under its Yes brand – said that all Yes postpaid and wireless broadband subscribers will be automatically upgraded to 5G-A at no extra cost and no registration required, though they’ll need a compatible 5G-A device to reap the benefits of the tech upgrade. YTL also said it plans to roll out the service nationwide by December 2025.
YTL said the service leverages the 700-MHz and 3500-MHz bands, which enables both stronger indoor penetration and broader outdoor coverage.
Apart from faster data speeds and lower latencies, the 5G-A service also sports network slicing with quality-of-service prioritisation, which YTL said will ensure best-in-class performance across activities such as streaming, gaming and mission-critical industrial applications.
“This is more than a network upgrade; it’s a game-changer,” said YTL Communications CEO Wing K Lee in a statement. “With 5G Advanced, Malaysians can enjoy broader and deeper 5G coverage nationwide and a high-performance wireless network the country has not seen before.”
YTL is offering the service via 5G wholesaler Digital Nasional Berhad, which launched 5G-A on its network in February this year.
“With Yes 5G Advanced network slicing now activated nationwide and the upgrade to 5G Advanced already underway in the Klang Valley, we look forward to working closely with YTL Communications to accelerate the nationwide rollout of these advanced, AI-powered capabilities by year-end,” said DNB CEO Azman Ismail.
David Hägerbro, president and CEO of Ericsson Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, which supplied the equipment for DNB’s 5G-A deployment, added that YTL is the ninth operator globally to commercially launch 5G-A.
While YTL might be first off the post with commercial 5G-A in Malaysia, rival telcos have been trialling the technology for some time, mainly in search of suitable use cases for it.
U Mobile, Malaysia’s second 5G operator, is including 5G-A in its ongoing network rollout via partnership deals signed in April with Huawei and ZTE, with a particular focus on enterprises who would benefit from 5G-A’s slicing features and indoor coverage.
Maxis and Huawei established a joint innovation centre in August 2024 to develop 5G-A solutions with a focus on use cases that leverage mobile edge computing, network slicing, end-to-end network orchestration, RedCap and Passive-IoT.
CelcomDigi and U Mobile have also been collaborating on developing use cases for 5G-A since last year, to include live TV broadcasts.
