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Mobile internet, 4G and 5G in Malaysia

Malaysia has five mobile operators: CelcomDigi, Maxis, Telekom Malaysia, U Mobile and YTL Communications. All five signed 5G access agreements with Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB), the state-owned company that built the country's first 5G network — four in 2022, Maxis last. DNB reported covering 64.7% of populated areas as of 30 June 2023 and reached its 80% target in December 2023. Mind the measure: 'coverage of populated areas' is DNB's own term and is not the same as population or geographic coverage.

The regulator MCMC publishes no national 4G or 5G percentage in any form we could retrieve, so we quote none. The figures that do circulate come from the operators themselves: CelcomDigi advertises '96% coverage across Malaysia' without stating which technology it covers or what it rests on. That is marketing rather than measurement — and that distinction is exactly why no national number appears on this page.

Roaming in Malaysia without an eSIM

Malaysia is outside the EU and the EEA, so 'Roam Like at Home' does not apply. That arrangement covers the EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, along with Moldova and Ukraine, and Malaysia is not among them. Your Belgian or Dutch bundle therefore does not cross the border with you: your operator bills every megabyte at its own out-of-bundle roaming tariff, with none of the EU price caps that apply inside the zone. The European Commission itself advises checking that cost with your provider before you travel.

Malaysia's 5G model is changing: from one wholesale network to two

Malaysia built 5G differently from most countries: DNB, a state-owned company, deployed a national wholesale network that the operators resold to their own customers. That model is now being unwound. U Mobile was approved in November 2024 to deploy a second, independent 5G network and launched it in August 2025 as ULTRA5G, prioritising airports and hospitals and targeting 80% of populated areas in the second half of 2026. MCMC confirms on its own site that this dual-network model follows a ministerial directive.

For a traveller, little changes in practice: your eSIM connects to whichever network hosts it, with nothing to configure or choose. It does explain why Malaysian 5G coverage figures from different years contradict each other — they describe different networks. So leave your phone free to move between 5G and 4G rather than locking it to one technology.