If your 5G connection in Malaysia feels slower than it did a couple of years ago, the data is on your side. The country's median 5G download speed has fallen by nearly half since the end of 2023, even as more Malaysians than ever are paying for a 5G plan.
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The numbers behind the slowdown
Ookla's network analysis, as reported by Malay Mail and other outlets, put Malaysia's median 5G download speed at 242.92 Mbps in the third quarter of 2025, down 46% from 451.79 Mbps in the fourth quarter of 2023. Upload speeds fell too, down 41% from 49.87 Mbps to 29.52 Mbps over the same window. Those figures come from crowdsourced Speedtest data on real phones, so they reflect what users actually get, though the sample is self-selected rather than a full census.
Those are still quick numbers on paper, and Malaysia is not alone in watching 5G plateau as networks fill up. The worry is the direction: a service sold as an upgrade that keeps getting slower is a service under strain, which is close to how Ookla itself framed the trend.
Why it is happening
There is no single villain. Ookla points to a mix of factors, including patchy indoor and rural coverage and the fact that phones still spend much of their time on 4G. But the one analysts keep returning to is the network's design. Malaysia built its 5G on a single wholesale network run by Digital Nasional Berhad, so almost everyone's traffic shared one set of pipes. That kept the early rollout fast and cheap. Then demand caught up: over roughly the same period, 5G subscriptions climbed from about 4.6 million in late 2023 to more than 28 million by late 2025, on MCMC and Ookla figures cited by Tech Wire Asia. Pack far more users onto shared capacity and the median speed tends to fall.
Subscriber totals are not the same as everyone being online at once, so this is a correlation the reporting draws rather than a proven mechanism. Even so, congestion on a shared network is the explanation the analysts land on most often.
What is being done about it
Malaysia has since moved toward a dual-network model, licensing a second 5G operator so the country is no longer leaning on one wholesale provider. The shift is early, though: as of October 2025, more than 80% of 5G traffic still ran through DNB. The government is also targeting 98% 5G coverage in populated and industrial areas by 2030. Whether the added competition and capacity actually pull speeds back up is what the next few Ookla quarters will show.
Meanwhile, the data centres are booming
Here is the part that stings for anyone staring at a loading spinner. While the mobile network Malaysians use every day went backwards, the country has been pouring investment into data centres. Property firm JLL expects Malaysia's data-centre capacity to more than double to 2,055 megawatts by the end of 2026, with a further 3,500 megawatts in the pipeline beyond that, as The Edge reported. Researchers at ISEAS project data-centre demand could top 5,000 megawatts by 2035, around 40% of Peninsular Malaysia's present generating capacity. It is the same build-out we have flagged as an investment risk worth watching.
These are two different systems, and it is worth being precise: a data centre in Johor runs on grid power and fibre, and it did nothing to slow the 5G on your phone. The two build-outs were never a single budget line. But the contrast is hard to miss. Capacity for foreign AI and cloud tenants, part of Malaysia's growing role as a regional compute hub, has arrived fast and flush with investment, while the consumer network that people pay a monthly bill for filled up and slowed down over the same years. Reading a priority into that is interpretation, not fact, but it is a fair thing for a paying subscriber to notice.
The number to watch is simple. If the second network is doing its job, median 5G speeds should start climbing back toward their 2023 level over the coming quarters. If they keep sliding, the problem runs deeper than one wholesale provider.
Cover and data-centre photos courtesy of Zac Gudakov and Winston Chen on Unsplash. Chart by ProductNation.
