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There seems to be some confusion among the public as to what is Low-Band and Mid-Band 5G, eg some experts term Low-Band 5G as sub-1GHz while others term it as sub-2GHz, mainly because presently most Low-Band 5G is sub-1GHz (eg 600MHz and 700MHz) and because presently nearly all 4G frequency Bands are from 800MHz to sub-3GHz = the newer 5G technology was allocated by the authorities freq Bands that were away from the 4G freq Bands = no radio interference, eg in Malaysia's case, in 2020 MCMC allocated DNB1 a 2X30MHz block at 700MHz = Low-Band 5G and a 100MHz block at 3500MHz or 3.5GHz = Mid-Band 5G.

But in the future, when the authorities refarm some of the 4G frequency Bands for 5G, this confusion should be cleared. .......

- Mid-band 5G: Medium range, good speed. The mid band operates between 2-6 GHz and provides a longer range than the high-band, with good speeds in the gigabit per second range. In fact, this 5G spectrum is the most used 5G band and is commonly used on business campuses.

- Low-band 5G: Long range, slower speed. The low band operates below 2 GHz, but it is very crowded with 4G LTE traffic, It is commercially important for industry. IoT sensors can use low band 5G to monitor wind and solar farm conditions over large areas.
https://www.digi.com/blog/post/what-is-c-ba...mportant-for-5g - 2 Nov 2022 - What Is C-band and Why Is It Important for 5G?
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This post has been edited by lurkingaround: Apr 20 2025, 11:50 PM

I think there is no future for DNB tech, DNB is a bailout pending company created by government from Day 1. All YTL, CDB and Maxis will lose their stakes badly on this. TM not buying which is smart, UM “won” their own 5G spectrum. DNB initially said spending 11B then from newer news said 16B if not mistaken, a very big hole to bailout … on average CRB and Maxis only report 1B profit annually … jointly need 8 years to cover DNB hole. Not to mention they need to pay dividends and continue operating their network.

In 5 years time, 6G will come. Maxis and CDB company will be so pressured either there will be merger or some others will buy them over. I think gov deliberately bankrupting Maxis and CDB. From investor perspective, Maxis and CDB are company facing doomsday.

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Fyi, .......

https://theedgemalaysia.com/article/celcom-...xt-five-years-0 - Celcom Axiata to invest RM100m in IoT segment over the next five years - 11 Jan 2019
.... He added that the telecommunications company had spent some RM10.68 billion in capital expenditure from 2008 to 2018. Out of this, RM2.3 billion was spent on its 4G LTE capabilities. ...
= Celcom spent RM10.68 billion from 2008 to 2018 to deploy its 3G/4G/LTE network. A similar sum spent by the other celcos, Maxis, Digi, U Mobile, YTL and TM Unifi Mobile, to do the same = about RM50 to RM60 billion spent on deploying 3G/4G/LTE networks in Malaysia.

So, DNB spending "only" RM16 billion over 10 years to deploy its Low-Band/Mid-Band/High-Band 5G network is pennywise.
....... Furthermore, Maxis, CDB and YTL will be the controlling shareholders in DNB1 if they join forces together, eg to charge their ownselves fairly for 5G access and to repay the RM16 billion investment in time.

Let's wait-and-see how DNB2 will compete with DNB1, ie in 2026.

Maybe DNB1 will come out ahead, eg Ericsson vs Huawei equipment, slightly more bandwidth capacity in Low-Band 5G, etc.
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Telco spent 10B including coverage and capacity expansion. DNB spent 16B only on coverage not inclusive indoor. Not even equivalent comparison.

UM has plenty of LTE bands can be used for LTE-CA in NSA, seems more promising in terms of of capacity, also they can refarm to 5G SA easily all under their control. While DNB only has 700mhz and cant CA with existing telco LTE bands which is sad due to different vendor. That is why no telco wants DNB also cause using Ericsson - no future just alone.

Too many telco under DNB making things complicated, cant move, everyone has own agenda. Not really a good thing.

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DNB1 will soon be transitioning from 5G NSA to 5G SA = it's Low-Band 2X20MHz block at 700MHz can be released for indoor coverage because 5G NSA Mid-Band at 3500MHz has very poor indoor coverage. So, DNB1's RM16 billion investment over 10 years is inclusive of indoor coverage.
....... AFAIK, wrt inner-door coverage deep inside shopping malls, condos and their basement carparks, wireless repeaters are needed for both 4G and 5G, which is a different topic.

U Mobile's DNB2 will straightaway deploy as 5G SA, not 5G NSA, starting in H2 2025. So, there is no question of UM using LTE-CA with 5G NSA.
....... There is little difference between DNB1 refarming some 4G freq Bands from Maxis and CDB for 5G, and DNB2/U Mobile refarming some of its 4G freq Bands for 5G, eg both DNB1 & 2 requires approval from MCMC, ie the sunset date for 4G is determined by MCMC.

AFAIK, Ericsson/Nokia > Huawei, eg .......

Ericsson and Mobily test 5G 6 Component Carrier Aggregation, achieve 4.2 Gbps downlink throughput
- Ericsson partnered with Mobily and MediaTek to test six-component carrier aggregation (6CC) on a live 5G Standalone network.
- This test marks the first global 5G 6CC on a live 5G standalone network with 3 FDD and 3 TDD carriers.
- The test utilized Ericsson Spectrum Sharing and 5G Carrier Aggregation software to achieve a downlink throughput of 4.2 Gbps.
PRESS RELEASE FEB 12, 2025
https://www.ericsson.com/en/press-releases/...link-throughput

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Calling these record-breaking speeds “impressive” would be an understatement — we’re redefining what speed really means! Today, T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) announced a groundbreaking achievement, reaching record downlink speed using Nokia’s cutting edge 5G RAN equipment. The testing was conducted on both a commercial Samsung Galaxy S25 and a non-commercial mobile test device leveraging the newly announced Qualcomm X85 5G Modem-RF, all on America’s largest and fastest 5G network. ...
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/2025...Breaking-Speeds - Mar 18, 2025 10:08 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Beyond Fast: T‑Mobile’s 5G Advanced 6-Carrier Aggregation Sets Record-Breaking Speeds
The Un-Carrier with Nokia and Qualcomm Push Downlink Speeds to 6.3 Gbps Using Standalone and Sub-6GHz Spectrum in its Latest Field Test
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This post has been edited by lurkingaround: Apr 21 2025, 05:27 PM

Nah, anyone working in telecom industry knows Nokia inferiority. Huawei, ZTE, and Ericsson all have their own advantages. For telco perspective, they would not simply switch vendor because it would require dismantling their existing infrastructure. (ie. CelcomDigi merger, u will see a lot of Celcom keep sites in Klang Valley getting the Huawei RRU dismantled and replaced with ZTE RRU to keep their network management less problematic, same as Digi keep sites in the south)

Huawei is top notch in telecom industry btw, even till now, they are the only one with 3-beams antenna that would allow telco to continue using RRU+passive antenna setup without the need to invest for a more expensive AAU. Nokia on the other hand still struggling with basic 4T6S

Not to mention Chinese firms have a lot of good RRUs and AAUs. To be frank, in where free market is practice, even in EU, Huawei and ZTE are still often much preferred. Their solutions are simply affordable and also advance, can tackle for lots of environments

This post has been edited by jasontanky: Apr 21 2025, 05:37 PM

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So, why CCP China celcos use Ericsson 5G SA equipment.? .......

.... Major Customers who have launched Ericsson 5G Core

The following customers have launched an Ericsson 5G Core as of the writing of this article:

Rogers Canada
Singtel Singapore
China Mobile.
China Telecom.
BT network in the UK,
Telefónica Deutschland
SmarTone Hong Kong

Ericsson claims the world’s first in 5G Core and NR SA and as per GlobalData, is a leader in 5G Core. “The solution has gained significant market momentum, which currently includes 64+ 5G contracts, 33+ live Non-Standalone (NSA) deployments, and 100+ Standalone (SA) trials in the planning or execution stages.” ...
https://5g.security/open-ran/comparison-5g-core/ - A Comparison of 5G Core Network Architectures - 28 Feb 2021
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Remember, like nearly all high-tech companies in CCP China, Huawei has close ties with the CCP or is under the CCP's thumb = it's likely that Huawei 5G SA equipment and software have hidden backdoors to the CCP's spy/hack agencies. Hence, USA, Australia, Japan, some EU countries, etc, have banned Huawei, ZTE, etc from their 5G network.
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This post has been edited by lurkingaround: Apr 21 2025, 05:58 PM

DNB TM celcomdigi maxis control by the same common shareholders
So the all have the same agenda
Already long sharing site fiber backhaul

YTLC is big giga mega company. YES just dont want war with telco.
YES offer unlimited NO FUP uncapped speed 5G with lowest price

You should know core network is a completely different thing as we're discussing just now right. And yes, Ericsson is a huge player in 5G core network. But in terms of antenna, as those CCs and CAs stuff u mentioned, Ericsson is still lacking behind. Telco can use different antenna vendor with different core network vendor, just now u were discussing antenna vendor, and suddenly u switched to core network

i thought the reason they don't refarm the LTE spectrum for 5G is due to the restriction set by MCMC?

Correct, if u noticed the recent antenna swap by CelcomDigi. Most of their equipments are actually 5G ready except no n78 AAU yet. Literally just need government to flip the finger for them to enable 5G. However, without n78, the 5G wouldn't be that much faster than 4G+, theoretically is only 10% more efficient.

This DNB stuff also make Maxis to invest less on their own network infrastructure, you can see a steep decline on CAPEX on their network infrastructure in recent quarters.

I think China uses all telco brands in China, but largely still provided by Huawei and ZTE. Their market large enough to have a lot of vendors. One reason is to preserve the relationship and trade between countries and job opportunities.

For Huawei 5G back doors, in US the same team that searching for WMD in Iraq still working on it …

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Are CelcomDigi's 4G equipment 5G SA-Ready if got n78 AAU.?
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Fyi, Pres. Bush Jr's family in Texas were very involved in the oil business. So, non-existent WMD was his excuse to invade Iraq and steal its oil, in order for his family and oil cronies to get filthy rich ... but Al Qaeda and ISIS terrorists put paid to most of his greedy plans.

This has nothing to do with hidden backdoors in 5G hardware and software, ie intentionally inserted hidden backdoors are not non-existent = they are existent, unlike the above non-existent WMD in Iraq..
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This post has been edited by lurkingaround: Apr 21 2025, 07:02 PM

In fact, almost and if not all 5G RRUs and AAUs are SA ready. But to be frank, SA will barely bring in any major speed improvement as with you could not CA with 4G to get better speed.

China prioritizes on SA, first reason is for news and propaganda, second reason is their 4G antenna is usually quite cheap and low spec (their gov focus on number of sites deployed as a political tasks(政治任务)) so as 5G also part of political tasks, they'll just use 5G equipments from the very top to dirt cheap vendor like those fake spotlight antenna that China Mobile use. (Those locations that really needed 5G will still use big vendors like Huawei/ZTE/Ericsson, those less important one, just to make up for CoPA and also to cover residential deadzone will use cheap antenna with cheap RRU)

In a nutshell, China use cheaper equipments but build their antenna in very high density, so each antenna handle less user, another advantage is less discrepancy between cheap and good phone. You can see the "speed surge" of speedtest.net of China mobile network is a lor lesser compared to other countries after.Ookla decided to.only consider speedtest data tested from devices with modern chipsets

This post has been edited by jasontanky: Apr 21 2025, 06:44 PM

I get info that MCMC requirement to Umobile that their price cannot be lower than DNB... wonder if there is open tender mention this...



nevertheless, I still stand on my point... still dunno why we need 2nd radio network.... duplicate coverage... utilization will be messy... etc



for normal users with 1 sim, it does not matter how many DNB available, if the 5G gone = gone. everyone will use back 4G/2G as redundancy.



with 2nd 5G network exist, it will be useful if the person has 2 sim...but only minority have multiple sim...aiz

This post has been edited by prosibu: Apr 22 2025, 10:23 AM

I think with DNB having multiple companies of ownership + government, there will be no further technological advancement as too many stakeholders with uncommon agenda.

This not into consideration the amount of debts DNB accumulated from past gov (not sure any songlap), those owning DNB like Maxis, CDB and YTL will have to bailout hurting their financial for future tech progress.

UM with good cabling manage to escape the sinking Titanic.

Tech service providers with no autonomy for tech advancement is a sinking ship.

Telco tech is always designed for one gen evolve to another gen. 4G is most Msia telco final destination as they no longer able to go beyond 5G with DNB stalemate.

Company like Maxis and CDB will go into stagnation next few years, large telco retrenchment, sold off or consolidation within 5 yrs prior to 6G. End of an era for Maxis and CDB are very near …

Blaming DNB for "telco no innovation" when our telcos had 10+ years to fix 4G but instead gave us potato speeds with expensive pricing. Now suddenly they care about "progress"?

In Korea, even competing telcos work together for 5G in rural areas. Here? Our telcos needed gomen to force them to share 4G towers and still coverage like Swiss cheese.

Until today, 4G still got congestion like mamak during lunch hour, but with DNB 5G, even kampung folks can enjoy fast internet without selling their kidneys for "premium" 5G plans.

If MNO build 5G sendiri, confirm they will charge us RM5/Gb. 5G infrastructure damn expensive wei. Need thousands of new towers, all the fiber, maintenance. You think Maxis/CelcomDigi will swallow those costs? Confirm they will pass 100% to users with "5G Premium" plan. Now with DNB, we get affordable 5G because cost shared by all.

If Maxis and CelcomDigi kena stagnant, itu sendiri punya pasal lah. They had 10 years to fix 4G but busy counting money instead. Now DNB comes in 2 years give us top 10 global 5G speeds at reasonable price.

And this "too many stakeholders" excuse? If Korea can make it work with competing telcos sharing infrastructure, why can't we? Oh right... because our telcos rather fight over scraps than actually improve things for users.

The real sinking ship is telcos still trying to sell us 2010s network at 2030s prices while 4G still lagging like KTM train.

All those predicting "end of era" for Maxis/CelcomDigi... maybe good riddance? New era might actually give us proper speeds for fair price for once. At least now kampung makcik can watch TikTok in 5G without selling her kerbau to pay the bill.



This post has been edited by OfficiallyAhmad: Apr 29 2025, 05:17 PM

DNB 5G speed now drops to ~200Mbps from its all time high showcase 1Gbps (Rank 38 - not Top 10 Global now)… DNB 5G will continue to crash as they have no more ways to evolve… In building still nothing … coverage for 5G still poorer than 4G indoor and outdoor … coverage now stagnant … DNB will go down together with Maxis, CDB and YTL (3 suckers forced to pay for DNB debts).

In Korea and Singapore for example, the vendors are chosen by telcos and contract negotiated with telco requirements, DNB’s vendor Ericsson not chosen by telcos … and therefore will come alot of incompatibilities as none telcos in Malaysia using Ericsson.

Whether what i say telco will do a better job shall just see UM 5G. UM is using Huawei/ZTE 4G now award 5G to both .. compatibilities will be great 👍🏼…

What are all the 5G bands active locally right now? Different websites give different data... really confusing. Do we actually have N26 850mhz active?, most websites list it. And is our N28 700mhz....N28a or N28b? 4G anchor frequency B28a or B28b?

Where/how to confirm this?

∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆
Bands 5G
n26 (850), n28a (700), n28b (700), n78 (3500), n257 mmWave (28GHz)

Bands 4G
B1 (2100), B3 (1800), B5 (850), B7 (2600), B8 (900), B20 (800), B28a (700), B28b (700), B38 (TDD 2600), B40 (TDD 2300)

Bands 2G
B3 (1800), B8 (900)