APAC Region continuously emerges on 5G Race

South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and China are the most advanced in 5G; Thailand is making good progress; and India, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan fall behind their regional rivals in terms of 5G policy implementation, having yet to develop one.

In some of these countries, operators are still focused on enhancing 4G connectivity, thus any progress on 5G is unlikely before 2022.

“A country’s ability to progress to 5G will largely depend on existing network infrastructure. Mature markets such as South Korea and Australia already had an over 90% 4G coverage. But Malaysia and the Philippines still clock under 80% in terms of 4G network coverage so operators in these countries will not be able to launch a 5G network until early 2022,” explained Iyer.

Looking ahead to 2021, she anticipates that different markets in the APAC area will pursue quite different goals, and that 5G adoption would be uneven.

“On one hand countries such as Japan and Taiwan are moving towards expanding 5G network coverage beyond major cities and improving network speed. On the other hand, in India and Indonesia, operators still await a nationwide 5G policy, certainty over contiguous blocks of 5G spectrum, final decision on the base price, etc. The disparity over progress in 5G will continue to be seen in Asia during this year.”