- Launch live at Berjaya Times Square and across Penang Bridge, with wider roll-out pledged.
- U Mobile has gone with Huawei and ZTE for the gear and is aiming to cover about 80% of the population by late 2026.
What happened: ULTRA5G debuts at Berjaya Times Square and Penang Bridge
U Mobile has activated its next-generation ULTRA5G network, initially lighting up Kuala Lumpur’s Berjaya Times Square and the full span of the 14km Penang Bridge, with a pledge to reach 80% of populated areas by the second half of 2026. Key launch details and locations are set out in the operator’s U Mobile press release, which also highlights demonstrations such as 4K live streaming and network slicing.
The build relies on Chinese vendors: U Mobile previously confirmed it chose Huawei and ZTE for radio and core deployments, a decision documented in this Reuters report. The launch follows Malaysia’s policy pivot to a dual-network model after DNB passed an 80% coverage threshold; U Mobile is now the second national 5G wholesaler alongside DNB.
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Why it’s important
A second 5G network could squeeze prices and push clearer service tiers, felt most indoors—think shopping centres, metro stations and older office blocks where signals often falter. The trade-offs are real. Overlapping coverage can waste capital that might be better spent on indoor systems or backhaul, and reliance on foreign RAN kit exposes the rollout to geopolitics, supply-chain hiccups and the risk of getting locked into a single vendor.
There is also an execution challenge. Promised 80% population coverage by 2026 will be judged against real-world user experience—uplink throughput, cell-edge performance, and indoor consistency—not just headline availability. With DNB upgrading towards 5G-Advanced, U Mobile must prove ULTRA5G brings credible, independently verifiable gains—throughput, latency, reliability—rather than marketing-led milestones, and that spectrum reuse and backhaul planning are robust.
