BARCELONA: Malaysia has proven to the world that the approach it has taken to build a 5G network is successful after emerging at the top spot globally in the 5G consistency score.

Ookla president and chief executive officer Stephen Bye said that, unlike the challenge of building a network to achieve a certain speed, creating a consistent one presents a different trial altogether.

"Ookla we are proud of ourselves for being an independent party that looks at the quality of networks, we measured in many different dimensions, one of which is speed, which is what people know us for in terms of speed test.

"But another metric that we look at is consistency. In fact, it is so much harder to achieve, a consistent network across a wide geography and especially in Malaysia given the challenge with buildings... to build a network that has a consistent performance is very very challenging," he told Bernama and RTM.

Bye was met after handing over the Best Global Consistency Score award to Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil in a ceremony on the sideline of the Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2024 (MWC2024), here, on Feb 26 which was also attended by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia (MCMC) chairman Tan Sri Mohamad Salim Fateh Din.

Ookla, a global leader in network intelligence and connectivity insights, announced today that Malaysia's 5G Consistency Score for Q4 2023 is the global winner amongst countries which had successfully launched 5G commercially.

Malaysia scored 97.27%, followed by North Macedonia at 94.06% and United Arab Emirates at 93.88%.

Explaining further, Bye said the award was not an award that Ookla granted often and it was not an award that many had won.

"As a former chief technology officer and someone who built and operated networks in the past, I know personally how challenging it is to achieve this kind of award and it is a credit to the country of Malaysia that they achieved this award and we are honoured to be able to grant it to them," he said.

Describing it as a well-deserved award, Bye noted that although the approach taken by Malaysia in building the network with Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB) was unique and had a lot of sceptics, it however had proven could be successful with the support of the regulatory environment, the ministry and operators.

"It has really proven to be something that I think many countries are gonna look at and wonder if that may be a better approach for the way in which they are deploying 5G and advanced technology. So, it's a credit to the country of Malaysia, the policies that are there for them to be able to achieve this award," he said.

Meanwhile, Fahmi when met said that he had also taken the opportunity to discuss with Ookla to see deeper cooperation to help Malaysia overcome some problems, especially in terms of service quality and also the quality of experience for users.

"So we hope this achievement will fuel the spirit of all telcos (telecommunications companies) and our friends at MCMC so that we work harder to provide cheaper, faster and more reliable Internet for all Malaysians.

"This is a good achievement but we are all aware that in Malaysia we have some challenges with 5G Internet...one of the areas we need to prioritise is in buildings. This is one of the things that will be a priority for the ministry from now on, ” he said. – Bernama