Government Wants Minimum 30Mbps On 700Mhz Spectrum

With the digital TV transition, the very desirable 700Mhz spectrum is now freed up for wireless telecommunication provider to bid. What makes this bandwidth unique is the location of the 700 MHz Band — gives it excellent propagation characteristics allowing the signals to penetrate buildings and walls easily and to cover larger geographic areas with less infrastructure cost.

Malaysia Communication and Multimedia Commission will be opening the tender for 700Mhz spectrum come end this month with bidders given a long list of orders to fulfill if they are selected. As this being the ‘Golden Spectrum’ we can expect all the major operators standing in line for the bandwidth but we do suspect this time around MCMC will be placing the price tag higher than before. Only those with financial might like Maxis, Celcom, Digi and U Mobile will have the resource and desire to go into a bidding war.

Once the spectrum is allocated, MCMC further insists operators to comply with certain criteria’s like the minimum speeds of 30 megabit per second when roll out is complete by 2020 and also provide strategies to ensure price of mobile broadband is lower than the current package offered. Target coverage for LTE is 95% and 98% between 2020 and 2023 respectively, mobile operators will have to work together and spread out their transmitters accordingly to reach the goal set out by the government. The bandwidth can expected to will be rolled out by end 2019.

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