The roll out of 5G has been taken place aggressively everywhere in the world especially in the leading countries such as the United States, China and Europe. Based on research projection, the total amount on 5G roll out in global supply chain is expected to hit at least $2.7tn in the next 10 years.
In most articles to date, the focus is emphasizing on the impact to societies that comes with the 5G roll out. However there is little discussion on the impact to the industry and their contribution towards enabling 5G. In this article, we will discuss about some industries in Malaysia which may be little known to the consumers with regards to their contribution towards 5G.
The Big Man Behind the Scene
The first thing Malaysian think of 5G is likely the mobile service operators such as Digi, Maxis, Celcom and etc which provide the communication services. These companies are service providers who manage the telco equipment and offer the mobile data plan to consumers.
But these service providers do not produce their own 5G technologies. So who are actually supplying those 5G equipment? These are done by the well known giants such as Huawei, Ericson, Nokia and etc. They are the dominant equipment manufacturers which design and build the base stations and the mobile features and all its related technologies.
For most countries, these oversea companies are the one responsible for the deployment of the majority of the 5G equipment and infrastructure. However, in the long term, it is unfeasible for these giants to consistently follow-up with maintenances of the infrastructure over the years. Besides, it is also challenging for them to study each countries existing infrastructure and plan out how to integrate the new 5G infrastructure into the existing system.
This is where the local companies step in to help. In Malaysia, there are still a few local companies such as OCK and Binacom who assist in the installation and maintenance of the infrastructure and equipment. They also serve as the system integrator which acts like a middle man between telco manufacturer and telco service operator. It is also worth mentioning that all these activities are monitored by local authorities, in case of Malaysia, MCMC.
It is meaningless to operate 5G services without the availability of 5G user equipment (UE), which here regards to mobile phone. It can be noticed that the aggressive launching of 5G mobile phones has started since 2020 indicating the all-time mentioned 5G speed has now come slowly starting to become a reality.
Malaysia’s Role in 5G Development
One may wonder if any of the Malaysian companies are involved in such high tech industry? The answer is yes. One very good example is our local home grown tech company Inari Amerton Bhd which provides OSAT (Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test) services to some chip devices which can be found in every APPLE phone! Basically one of the company’s principal activity is to provide wafer dicing, testing and packaging services for RF devices to be used in mobile phones.
Recently, many other supporting industries such as tester equipment manufacturing, test probes fabricators for chip testing are also booming in Malaysia where companies such as JFTECH, Aemulus and UWC are riding on this mega trend.
Just recently, it has been reported that UWC has been engaged by a very well known test equipment manufacturer in US to develop and manufacture the world’s highest frequency 5G OTA (over-the-air) chamber for 5G product testing. The company stock listed in KLSE has soared >10 times since the listing in 2019.
It is worth mentioning that Malaysia has played a key role in 5G supporting industries and their contribution may be little known to everyone. There are a lot more small industry players which play small role but great impact to the development of 5G.
A Worthwhile Investment
However many of the local companies are facing challenges in moving their business activities to most value added upstream business such as design house services due to the poor local eco-system and the requirement of high value investment in R&D. This imposes a great barrier to local innovation.
Perhaps a more comprehensive policy and program is required and driven by government. In the long term, this will greatly benefit the nation and the local telco industry. The growth in R&D would mean more intellectual property and technologies are locally owned. With that, local companies could potentially take over the design and deployment of future telco infrastructure in Malaysia and reduce dependencies on foreign companies to setup modern infrastructure.
As a bonus, Malaysia will also be training up talents fluent in Telco R&D. These talents will drive the telco industry in Malaysia, attracting and even retaining foreign investment in the countries as foreign companies would think twice before moving any of their operations setup out of the country due to the loss in the talents with the move.
This investment by the government is definitely worthwhile. As a developing nation, Malaysia has the potential to play a key role in 5G and even future development in this industry. What it needs now is the right eco-system that can encourage locally grown design and technologies. The ball is in our hands!
Originally published at http://filpal.wordpress.com on May 2, 2021.
