Reuters reported yesterday that none of the telcos made a bid for the service despite the government’s aim of starting the 5G rollout by the end of this year.

According to the report, the snub by Malaysia’s major mobile carriers was due to transparency and pricing issues, with DNB admitting that its initial target of having agreements with the telcos by the end of the year were “optimistic”.

The company said it has since revised its projection to early 2022.

At a press conference held in Parliament today, PKR’s Lembah Pantai MP Fahmi Fadzil called for communications and multimedia minister Annuar Musa to discuss terminating the company’s monopoly over the 5G spectrum with finance minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz.

“There must be engagements with all the telcos,” he said, and the relevant ministries must ensure that there was no favouritism towards any particular provider.

Fahmi said the “still unanswered question of who benefits from DNB and the single wholesale network model” must be addressed in the Dewan Rakyat, including details of parties holding an interest in the company.

“Our neighbours like Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand have already established working 5G networks and are developing services to take advantage of it.

On Annuar’s social media post boasting that 5G was able to produce 1,000Mbps internet speed that made watching HD videos seamless, Fahmi said this was akin to “peeling peanuts with a hammer” as there are bigger things at stake than YouTube video quality.

PKR’s Ledang MP, Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh, said if Malaysia’s rollout continued to hit speed bumps, the country would be left behind in the race to leverage the technology for the benefit of the economy and the people.

“So, we urge the government to see the impact this problem will have in the future. Now, we may not see the effects, but we do not want it to be an ongoing problem,” he said.