Digital Nasional Berhad

Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB) is a special purpose vehicle incorporated by the Malaysian Government on 1 March 2021 to deploy and operate a single nationwide 5G wholesale network on behalf of all mobile network operators. Under the model Malaysia adopted at the start of the decade, DNB does not sell retail services — operators such as Maxis, CelcomDigi, U Mobile and YTL Communications buy wholesale access and resell to their own subscribers.^[1]

History and the Wholesale Model

DNB was created in response to the finding that Malaysia's five mobile operators were duplicating infrastructure investment while rural coverage remained patchy. Instead of each carrier building its own 5G radio network, the government consolidated the build into one publicly funded entity renting capacity on a non-discriminatory basis. DNB reached its target of 80 percent 5G coverage of populated areas by the end of 2023, using mid-band spectrum in the 3.3–3.8 GHz range.^[1]

Policy then shifted. In 2023 the Government decided to move from a single wholesale network to a dual 5G network model, arguing that a sole provider created a bottleneck and weak competitive discipline. U Mobile was approved to build and operate the country's second 5G network, launching its own nationwide service in August 2025 with Huawei and ZTE as equipment partners.^[2]

Transition to the Dual-Network Era

The separation completed in mid-2026: DNB confirmed U Mobile offboarded from its wholesale network effective 30 June 2026, with U Mobile completing migration to its own network on 1 July 2026.^[3] U Mobile claims its ULTRA5G network now covers 90 percent of populated areas, ahead of DNB's reported 82.4 percent.^[4] DNB, meanwhile, activated an additional 100 MHz of spectrum in the 3.3–3.4 GHz band to expand capacity for the operators that remain on it, and continues as the wholesale backbone for the rest of the market.^[3]

Role in AI Infrastructure

5G matters for AI less through raw bandwidth than through latency and ubiquity: a nationwide low-latency fabric is what makes real-time AI inference away from data centres practical — autonomous inspection, telematics, remote healthcare monitoring and smart-city systems that cannot wait on a round trip to a cloud region. DNB's network is a core input to Malaysia's edge AI and Jendela broadband programmes, and complements the data centre build-out in Johor and the Klang Valley, where connectivity between facilities and population centres determines where inference nodes can sit.

>See Also

• AI Data Centres in Malaysia
• AI in Malaysian Telecommunications
• Edge AI
• MyDIGITAL Blueprint
• National AI Office Malaysia