For the next nine months or so, Maxis, Digi, Celcom and U Mobile customers may experience some disruptions in their services as all four telcos will begin their respective spectrum reallocation exercise.
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission has annouced that Digi, Maxis and Celcom have all begun migrating their base stations to operate within their reallocated spectrum blocks. This spectrum reallocation exercise will happen nationwide in phases, and will run from September 2016 until July 2017. While the telcos proceed with reallocating their spectrum blocks to the 900MHz and 1,800MHz bands, the MCMC has warned that customers of the respective telcos may face some service degradation during the nine-month period.
Spectrum reallocation was first announced by the MCMC back in February. Maxis, Digi, Celcom and U Mobile have been assigned 900MHz and 1,800MHz bands for a fee as the MCMC believes that these four telcos already have sufficient infrastructure to expand on. All four telcos will operate on this spectrum for the next 15 years, with full implementation expected to occur by the 1st of July, 2017.