UPDATE: YTL Communication’s Terragraph trials will begin on 1st March 2019.

YTL Communications, the company behind Yes, will be kicking off trials for a new high-speed wireless technology in collaboration with Facebook. It’s called Terragraph and it is capable of delivering gigabit speeds at a fraction of the cost of fiber.

Terragraph is a new wireless technology developed by Facebook that aims to solve a common urban problem where demand for high-speed broadband is high but access is lacking. This is perfect for cities that don’t have sufficient fibre coverage and there’s an urgency to roll out high-speed access in the shortest time possible.

The technology uses a higher 60GHz spectrum (V-band) that can provide high bandwidth in high-density areas. On top of that, it can also be deployed easily on existing street poles and buildings, which makes it faster and cheaper to deploy compared to fibre.

According to YTL, they are embarking on the first large scale market trial of Terragraph in Asia and the launch is taking place in Penang next Monday, 18th February 2019. The Minister of Communications and Multimedia, YB Gobind Singh will be present at the event.

Deutsche Telekom and its subsidiary Magyar Telekom had also conducted Terragraph trials in Mikebuda, Hungary. In areas where homes were connected to a slower copper connection, Terragraph has helped to raise the internet speeds from 5Mbps to 650Mbps. According to Terragraph, their current proof of concept has managed to deliver a peak data rate of 4.6Gbps (one direction) and an average peak user throughput of over 1 Gbps.

You can learn more about Terragraph over here.

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