CelcomDigi Berhad carried out the second edition of its three-part MY5G CEO Series, gathering a group of multi-industry leaders and decision-makers to exchange ideas and discourse on new opportunities made possible by the convergence of 5G and artificial intelligence (AI) to drive transformation and growth for the next generation of Malaysian enterprises.

For the second roundtable of the year, it featured global strategic partners and technology enablers from Microsoft, Huawei and Singapore’s National University Health (NUH) System, who spoke on different sectors such as smart cities, healthtech and overall use cases of 5G and AI in a controlled environment.

CelcomDigi CEO Datuk Idham Nawawi says there is value in continuously engaging diverse industries and sectors to accelerate digital solution development for enterprise growth in Malaysia.

“The true potential of 5G lies beyond the network and in its ability to power emerging technologies such as AI to revolutionise operations, enhance efficiency and drive innovation for enterprises across sectors. We see many successful industry-leading 5G-AI implementations among enterprises today and hope to inspire more businesses, with the MY5G CEO Series, to adopt and unlock the power of 5G and AI for their future growth,” he says.

CelcomDigi Chief Enterprise Business Officer Afizulazha Abdullah says the MY5G CEO also aims to create awareness of the need to digitise businesses. But more importantly, it is for CelcomDigi to be a catalyst in this ecosystem so that businesses take that first step.

“We wanted to create this platform to be a space that allows industry leaders to listen to ideas from our partners. This year, we upped the game and brought in our customers to share their own experiences with digitalisation,” he says.

In the most recent MY5G CEO Series talk, Microsoft senior industry advisor for worldwide public sector - government Asia Gerald Wang focused on smart cities and shared on the best practices with its global customers in terms of how they have implemented smart city technologies in public spaces.

“When it comes to smart cities, there are three main types of implementation: residential, commercial and industrial. These different spaces have different needs, ways of planning operations and measurements of success,” he explains.

“I want to give people a taste of what is happening out there and keep people interested so that they can think about how they are going to deliver new types of services to their customers, citizens and businesses.”

Huawei director for ICT Chief Transformation Officer David Morrison was also present at the talk. He delved deep into what 5G really is and how it enables businesses, drawing comparisons with the capabilities of 4G and other environments.

“The focus is more on the mechanics of what people can do in different industries, be it for healthcare in the hospital, a factory or the government’s perspective, as well as what needs to be considered before deploying the technology bit by bit,” he says.

“Companies don’t need a big bang approach. They can do it in one area at a time and start building the ecosystem. That is what is actually happening in China today where they are using digital twins citywide and are slowly but surely expanding the network by progressively deploying 5G and AI.”

NUH System consultant surgeon and Assistant Chief Technology Officer Dr Yujia Gao touched on the innovation 5G has brought about in the healthcare sector, from the initial thought process to implementation, adoption and moving beyond the initial use cases of 5G.

“We have an XR (extended reality) programme at NUH and we’re going into cloud robotics, remote wearables and integrated data networks that we built together with a few of our partners, like Microsoft,” he says.

“We want to expand the horizon as to how technology helps shape the way healthcare delivery will be like in the future. I think most people in the healthcare sector or the general public are focused on bandwidth and transmission speeds. While that is true, it is also about a way for us to customise and control our network, data flow and security, especially in high-risk environments like the hospital mission-critical data transmission, transmitting patients data live through the internet space in a very secure manner.”

When it comes to digitalisation, especially when incorporating new technologies such as 5G and AI, it is important for companies to know what they need before they take on implementing these technologies. Simply put, Afizulazha says there needs to be a driver (in this case, CelcomDigi) to operate the vehicle (5G and AI).

As we progress digitally, we also need to educate people, especially to be made aware that if technology falls into the wrong hands, it could lead to adverse incidents. “The public needs to be aware of how companies like CelcomDigi, Huawei and Microsoft protect our customers. We work with Cybersecurity Malaysia and PDRM (Royal Malaysia Police) and co-organise events with them to raise awareness,” he says.

“We want to make sure that there are risk mitigation measures to prevent security breaches from happening and, if something happens, how to recover from it. Those steps need to be in place and we at CelcomDigi have done that.”

However, the implementation of 5G cannot be done alone. Afizulazha says what we need is to build an ecosystem that facilitates the application of 5G-powered services and solutions. For instance, telecommunications companies like CelcomDigi serve as a technology enabler equipped with the capabilities to provide connectivity to partners and parties in the ecosystem for data capture.

Once data is collected, it needs to be stored in the cloud, which is where partners like Microsoft come into the picture as they provide off-premise and on-premise facilities based on a company’s security and data sovereignty needs.

“From there, the stored data needs to be analysed as well, which is where a partner like Huawei comes in. We use a product from them called Sentined where we look at our own data to understand our network better,” he says.

“We can see clearly that a symbiotic relationship is very important. While we can build our own network ourselves, we also need our partners to build the network with us.”

Looking beyond the partner relationship, Afizulazha says they collectively need to look at how issues in different industries in the country can be solved as well. “We have to look at problems and ask, ‘Do we have a solution for that and can we create a solution for the future?’”

“At CelcomDigi, it is our responsibility to catalyse innovation in the country by bringing in global and local partners. It’s also important for us to cultivate a local seed because there are certain use cases that we need to address locally.”

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