When MCMC announced LTE’s 2600MHz spectrum allocation around a year ago, YTL Communications or more known to consumers as Yes 4G was one of the eight companies in the list. So far, they have yet to roll out any LTE-based service to consumers but that might change next year though as Dato’ Yeoh Seok Hong, the Executive Director of YTL Communications have stated that the company’s LTE network will be launched in 2014.
The revelation was made at the YTL Communications and Intel joint announcement which took place earlier today. However, Dato’ Yeoh didn’t provide any exact launch date or timeline for the roll out of LTE under Yes 4G. Nevertheless, he did pointed out that users will barely notice the differences as their Yes 4G connection will fall back to WiMAX in situations where LTE network is not available.
Truth to be told, this is actually not the first time that Yes 4G have listed 2014 as their LTE year. The company’s CEO, Wing K. Lee have stated in an interview back in May that “4G-LTE is a 2014 story”. He also has pointed out in another interview that Yes 4G will continue to use WiMAX alongside LTE. Additionally, the company will also continue using Yes ID as a master identity which altogether are in line with Dato’ Yeoh’s description above.
In conclusion, it seems like LTE main role for Yes 4G is to supplement the company’s existing capabilities to deliver high speed wireless broadband to users through WiMAX. That being said, I do believe that Yes 4G will add variety of services to take advantage of their LTE network once it is fully deployed in 2014.
