Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

Written by: Muhammad Zulhusni, Journalist, AOPG

Last week, Nokia hosted a roundtable on the state of 5G in Malaysia, exploring the different applications of 5G, as the next generation in connectivity and associated technologies for the country’s industries, enterprises and society at large.

During the session, Daniel Jaeger, Head of Southeast Asia at Nokia, said that Malaysia has the vision to become a regional leader in the digital economy and believes that 5G will be one of the key drivers of this vision. He explained that 5Gs transformative nature lies in its ability to bring a quantum leap in low-latency and ultra-reliable connectivity that was not possible with previous technologies.

“Despite the economic challenges due to the pandemic, 5G adoption across Southeast Asia has been accelerating and 5G adoption is about to arrive in Malaysia. We believe that the nation’s enterprises and people are ready and looking forward to tap into the growth and innovation prospects that the next-generation of connectivity holds,” said Daniel, adding that Nokia sees itself as one of the key technological enablers which will help Malaysia accelerate its digital transformation plans with 5G.

As such, Nokia has been working with the government and other institutions over the recent years to equip the nation with the strong, secure and reliable 5G that it essentially requires.

During the roundtable, Nokia highlighted how 5G will be particularly transformative for asset-heavy industries that missed out on the initial digital revolution but must now prepare for the oncoming Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), especially in digitalising their processes and driving automation. Therefore, Nokia emphasised that there will be a need for connections between sensors, machines and workers – requiring mission-critical, wireless networking solutions.

“Conventional connectivity solutions remain limited in their reliability, security, multi-user capacity, performance and mobility to make optimal use out of 4IR technologies and applications. In contrast, 5G can unlock unprecedented productivity gains and connect all elements of industries and enterprises. This makes it a significant evolution over current LTE solutions, as 5G builds on LTE’s vertical differentiating capabilities – with important enhancements that are specifically relevant for industry,” stated Daniel.

According to the 5G Readiness Report by Nokia Bell Labs, Nokia’s award-winning research arm, companies at an advanced level of 5G adoption are growing faster than their peers and have witnessed a net +10% increase in productivity during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report, which was featured during the roundtable, also showed that while 86% of decision-makers said they have some form of 5G strategy, only 15% are currently investing in its implementation.

Today, Nokia is a global player in 5G – with 165 commercial 5G deals including 20 in the Asia Pacific and Japan region, and powering 65 live 5G operator networks. Daniel believes the company is playing a key role in bringing the region to the 5G future, while also combining its network and security expertise to create security solutions for 5G networks.

Daniel expressed how vital security is to customers when talking about 5G. He highlighted how the connected drones that Nokia and Sendai city deployed for disaster alert and rescue demonstrated a highly reliable and secure network. According to him, Nokia has tested many of its solutions and has conducted thorough studies in many countries, with many of those countries giving the green light due to the impressive security and reliability that Nokia is able to provide.

In Malaysia, Daniel shared that Nokia is currently a partner to the most important telco operators in various technology areas. With regards to 5G, Nokia was part of the National 5G Task Force under MCMC, where the company worked alongside service providers, business associations, communications equipment vendors, ministries and academia on spectrum management and allocation and the strategy and approach for rollouts across the country’s telco ecosystem – bringing the nation ever closer towards meeting the Malaysia 5.0 Digital Economy aspirations.

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