Malaysian Maxis signs up to Huawei for 5G
Huawei and Malaysian telco Maxis have signed a deal to roll out the latter's 5G network.
The Chinese telco equipment behemoth will supply LTE and 5G radio equipment and services, Huawei said, that will also allow Maxis to upgrade its existing 4G network.
Maxis chair YM Raja Tan Sri Dato' Seri Arshad bin Raja Tun Uda said Huawei was a long term partner of the telco.
In its earnings to June 30, Maxis reported half-yearly revenue of 4.4 billion Malaysian ringgits and post-tax profit of 806 million ringgits. For the second quarter, Maxis reported revenue down 4.7% year on year, and post-tax profit down 17% compared to last year.
Maxis reported having 3.1 million postpaid and 6.4 million prepaid customers as of June 30. Malaysia has a population of around 32.6 million.
The company said in its second quarter earnings that it had a live 5G trial in March, which reported close to 3Gbps in speed, while 5G testing began in East Malaysia, the part of the country on the island of Borneo, in June.
"The impact of advanced technologies on our progress as a nation is inevitable and we cannot afford to be left behind, especially with Industry 4.0 already upon us," Prime Minister of Malaysia Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad said.
"Collaboration between global players and local vendors is important to support a thriving technology ecosystem in Malaysia. I am pleased to see Maxis and Huawei taking advantage of this environment and supporting the growth of Malaysia's digital economy."
Earlier this week, it was announced that Indian telco Bharti Airtel had rolled out over 100 hops using microwave Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology from Huawei that increased its backhaul capacity by a multiple of four.
The MIMO links between the towers have been used for half a year and are capable of transmitting up to 13 kilometres while using 20% less power, Huawei said. The company claimed Airtel now had the largest deployment of MIMO microwave on the planet.
Also on Monday, Japanese telco KDDI announced it had selected both Nokia and Ericsson as "primary vendors" for its 5G network.
A day later Samsung said it too was selected by KDDI to deploy radio base stations, as well as a virtualised radio access network.
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