Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB) announced that a total of five Malaysian telcos now own an accumulative stake of 70% in the country’s single wholesale network, after they signed their Share Subscription Agreement (SSA). With that done, each telco will now need to inject RM233 million, to get their respective 14% stakes of the 5G network.
The five telcos are CelcomDigi, Maxis Broadband, U Mobile, Telekom Malaysia, and YTL Power International. As reported by SoyaCincau, the signing ceremony was conducted at DNB’s office at TRX Exchange. “The signing of the Share Subscription Agreement marks a momentous milestone for the Malaysian communications and digital industry, underscoring the strong sector-wide commitment towards realising the Government’s ambition of a Dual Network 5G model and as a lever towards powering Malaysia’s ambitions for the digital economy. The shift to an industry-led model will be instrumental in achieving a successful roll-out in Malaysia by leveraging the collective assets and resources from the telco Industry, and in building a solid platform for future technology evolution and service innovation. CelcomDigi Berhad is pleased to partner with the Government and the industry in building 5G for the future and for all Malaysians,” Datuk Idham Nawawi, CEO at CelcomDigi, said during the ceremony.
The 70% stake brings all five telcos and DNB another step closer to its 5G population goal, by which the latter has been mandated to reach its goal of 80%. Once that goal is achieved, a new entity will then be instructed to take over the state-owned network infrastructure. Not only that, but the government will also dispose of its entire stake in DNB at the beginning of next year and transform it into a fully private company that operates independently. At the time of writing, the government still hasn’t announced who the new entity that will take over the company will be, but it will
That being said, the Malaysian government via the Ministry of Finance (MoF) will still retain its 30% stake of DNB, as well as a special share in DNB. As of October this year, the country has recorded 3.6 million 5G service subscriptions. To put that in another way, that’s an adoption rate of 10.8% but it’s also important to note that the current 5G adoption rate of the country sits at 73%.
(Source: SoyaCincau)
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