For those who are not familiar with JENDELA, it is a large-scale nationwide network infrastructure project that aims to expand the coverage as well as to elevate the quality of service for 4G network in Malaysia. It is also meant to lay down the foundation for 5G technology which is expected to be deployed through phase 2 of JENDELA sometime in 2022 or 2023.
One of the main objectives for JENDELA’s Phase 1 is to increase the national average 4G download speed to 35Mbps by 2022. According to Opensignal’s new report which utilises data that was gathered from 1 August to 29 October 2020, the national average 4G download speed at the moment is 12.7Mbps which is much lower than the 25Mbps figure that the National Digital Infrastructure Lab (NDIL) has mentioned inside its report back in September [pdf].
Aside from that, another interesting figure that the Opensignal has highlighted in the report is the availability rate of 4G among users in Malaysia. In average, Malaysian users can connect to 4G network 86% of the time at the moment although the network analytics company also pointed out that users in nine states throughout Malaysia including Sabah and Sarawak are under the national average.
In a way, the new report from Opensignal has provided another justification for the implementation of JENDELA in regards to the current state of our 4G network. However, it is going to take a while before we can experience the fruit of the infrastructure project though as MCMC has just started the tender process for it earlier this month [pdf].
