Terragraph trial in George

Town, Malaysia
3 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 4

Executive Summary
Key take-aways from the trial to date include:

Time and Cost to Deploy

Terragraph has enabled Gigabit level speeds using
Facebook Connectivity’s mission is to bring more people online to a faster existing street furniture and power assets with a rapid
internet. Terragraph serves this mission by reducing the time and cost for deployment time of 2.5 months for an area of 2.5 square
service providers to deploy high speed connectivity through the use of km. Based on the results from the trial and projected
millimeter wave technology. commercial costs it is estimated that Terragraph CapEx
per home covered will be as low as 40% of that of an
YTL Communications is a Malaysian telecommunications operator that equivalent buried fiber build in some markets.
has been working to help Malaysia close its digital divide by building the
country’s first and only nationwide all-IP, all-4G network under the service Public/Private Partnership
brand of “YES”. This trial employed a unique value exchange model
in cooperation with the local government. Access to
To help evaluate Terragraph as a solution for high-speed fixed broadband street furniture during the trial period was provided
connectivity and public Wi-Fi, YTL Communications conducted a by the local government in exchange for YTL
large-scale trial in George Town, Malaysia, using the technology to Communications offering a free public Wi-Fi network
connect businesses and offices that had only copper/DSL connections in the George Town heritage area.
formerly.
mmWave Feasibility in APAC Urban Environments
During the trial period 120 users where served with fixed wireless access Terragraph, with its street level deployment, was also
(FWA) and 50 public Wi-Fi hotspots were provided in the George Town proven to be an efficient and high performance way
heritage area. Fixed wireless access users were experiencing speeds to provide connectivity in an environment where fiber
10-172 times faster than their previous copper-based connections, while deployment would have been challenging.
the public Wi-Fi service has so far provided connectivity to over 33,000
unique users with a high-quality Wi-Fi experience. Availability and Performance
The Terragraph network in George Town has achieved

This paper describes the trial deployments in detail, outcomes to date, availability of 99.5%, which is viewed as a reasonable

and highlights the opportunity to use Terragraph for rapid and threshold for broadband internet service.

cost-effective deployment of gigabit speed broadband connectivity.

5 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 6

Background
Access to reliable high speed broadband has become an essential part Currently, there are two methods to provide truly “gigabit” fixed
of modern life, society and business. Availability of broadband also broadband speeds: traditional fiber and emerging millimeter wave wireless
underpins digitization of the economy and the wider adoption of Industry networks. The latter is widely recognized as having a crucial role to play in
4.0 technology. Improved connectivity will also help communities access the next generation networks, as evidenced by 5G plans to use millimeter
online commerce, education, entertainment, healthcare and government wave technology for both fixed and mobile access.
services. At the same time, new technologies and use cases continue to
drive demand for data. Cisco estimates that IP traffic in the Asia-Pacific Developments in radio technology have opened up new opportunities to
region will grow at a compound annual rate of 26% and constitute of 12.2 create products that operate in high-frequency bands. These are bands in
billion networked devices by 2021. the millimeter wave range, from 30 GHz – 300 GHz. Most of these bands
have approximately 500-800 MHz of spectrum. However, even more
The demand for broadband network speeds and capacity will continue exciting are the possibilities offered by the V-band (60GHz) operating with
to grow. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Inclusive Internet Index 2019 at least 7 GHz of spectrum (57-64GHz), and potentially even 14 GHz (57-
found the average mobile speed in Asia to be 22.2Mbps (download) and 71GHz), making it the largest commercial radio band ever used.
10.8Mbps (upload). While this represents significant progress in recent
years, continuing this trajectory will require significant investments, new Millimeter wave spectrum can address the growing demand for
technology solutions and partnerships. bandwidth by delivering gigabits of capacity more quickly, easily and
cost-effectively compared to deploying fiber.
Solving the speed shortfall is the goal of many in the connectivity
ecosystem. This is true for the service providers, as well as national
and local governments. The Malaysian Government has set a target of
achieving average speeds of 30 Mbps in 98% of populated areas by 2023
as part of the National Fiberization and Connectivity Plan.
7 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 8

Introduction to
Terragraph
Facebook developed Terragraph starting with a basic problem statement:
“How can we contribute to the telecom ecosystem with a solution providing
“ Terragraph is able to
deliver fiber-like speeds
over metro-scale service
areas at a fraction of the
cost of fiber.
cost-effective, ultra-high speed connectivity?” Fiber is the de-facto
standard today for delivering connectivity in excess of Gbps in some cases,
yet fiber is often prohibitively expensive and time consuming to deploy due
to right-of-way constraints and trenching costs. As such, Terragraph seeks
to address the problem using millimeter wave technology. The radios are able to interconnect to form a layer 3 mesh which
can be scaled over large geographic areas and offers redundant and
Terragraph uses millimeter-wave radios to create both a scalable distribution reliable connectivity between end-points. Terragraph radio nodes can
network, as well as a home access link. Terragraph is able to deliver be deployed on abundant physical assets such as street furniture, for
fiber-like speeds over metro-scale service areas at a fraction of the cost of example, to provide last-mile gigabit-per-second connectivity between
buried fiber. Terragraph radios operate in the 60 GHz V-Band where there is a service provider’s fiber presence and subscriber residences. The
an abundance of available, unlicensed spectrum, and employ a TDD/TDMA deployment of street-level radios mitigates the high costs associated with
MAC structure which enables extremely efficient use of of this spectrum even fiber rights of way and trenching, thus lowering the cost-barrier for service
in highly congested scenarios. While originally envisaged for indoor use as a providers to bridge the demand for high speed connectivity.
version of Wi-Fi known as “WiGiG”, the system was adapted for outdoor use
and a global standard was created - IEEE 802.11ay. The wireless mesh design in Terragraph allows for route diversity
which provides high network availability. If a link goes down (because
of obstruction, interference, a power issue, etc.), the Open/R routing
protocol will automatically find another route through the network to the
destination node. With a higher number of average sectors per node,
the mesh becomes more reliable and can support greater increases in
bandwidth. This way, bandwidth augmentation on the distribution network
can be done seamlessly.
9 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 10

Attributes of Terragraph
Terragraph is focused on enabling and supporting the ecosystem
of silicon vendors, OEMs, and service providers to build and deploy
the technology to deliver high-speed connectivity. To demonstrate
Terragraph and provide the ecosystem with a proof of concept in
advance of commercial product availability, Facebook has developed
a reference radio design as well as a suite of tools to aid network
design, deployment, and management. Terragraph trials with service
providers are an important step in demonstrating the technology’s value
proposition and allow the ecosystem to learn what it takes to deploy
services over Terragraph. Some key attributes of Terragraph are:

• Operates in the unlicensed V-band: 60 GHz

• Uses standardized 802.11ay, enhanced with TDD/TMDA for

MAC efficiency at scale

• Current proof-of-concept system has a peak phy data rate

of 4.6 Gbps (one direction, single channel) and average peak
user throughput of over 1 Gbps

• Single link maximum range is approximately 250 meters in

the current system

• The network can be deployed in days rather than months

• Highly cost effective vs buried fiber

• Small, lightweight and low power - suitable for street

level deployments

• Supports highly scalable layer-3 mesh, powered by Open/R

routing software

• Uses IPv6
11 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 12

YTL Communications partnered with Facebook to evaluate Terragraph

Facebook and YTL Communications
for public Wi-Fi and fixed wireless access solution. YTL Communications
Collaboration visited the Terragraph lab at Facebook HQ in May 2018, and subsequently

YTL Communications and Facebook are collaborating as part of the Terragraph radios were brought to Malaysia for extensive technical testing

Telecom Infra Project (TIP). The aim of TIP is to create a new approach at YTL’s technical lab in July 2018.

to building and deploying telecom network infrastructure. That means

collectively working with a community of over 500 members to design and The collaboration began with YTL Communications controlled lab trial at

build technologies that are better, more efficient, and more interoperable. its Technology Center in Kuala Lumpur.

Figure 03 | Installation of Terragraph nodes

Figure 01 | YTL Communications Technology Figure 02 | Initial Terragraph trial network topology
Center in Kuala Lumpur

Figure 04 | Summary of trial network test results

13 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 14

The planning was followed by field surveys of streets and poles to verify
YTL Communications trial in the AI based design and check infrastructure prior to deployment.
George Town, Penang
After the successful trial at its lab facility, YTL Communications worked
with Facebook to deploy a Terragraph trial network using the reference
design radios. The UNESCO heritage zone in George Town, Penang, was
selected as the trial location and after thorough planning, engagements
with city and state authorities, the trial was announced in February 2019
and launched on March 1, 2019.

Trial Location and Radio Network Planning

Facebook worked with YTL Communications to plan and design the
network collaboratively. Facebook utilized advanced LiDAR data of
George Town collected by driving every street in the trial location. The
data was used to determine the Line of Sight between Terragraph nodes
and as input for network planning algorithms. Subsequently a design
of the coverage area was created using the LiDAR data and artificial
intelligence for site identification and selection.

Existing Services in George Town

There were no existing fixed access or public Wi-Fi services offered
by YTL Communications in George Town prior to this trial. YTL
Communications has existing 4G/LTE coverage in the region, operating
on TD-LTE in Band 38 (2600MHz) and 40 (2300MHz). The key fixed
access (FTTH) players in the city of George Town are Unifi/Telecom
Malaysia and TimeDotCom. There are limitations on the deployment of
fiber in George Town due to its UNESO heritage zone status.
15 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 16

Network Integration Design

The Terragraph network had to be integrated with YTL Communications For the fixed wireless access service, PPPoE sessions are terminated
existing network offering 4G/LTE and other in-building W-iFi services. between the CPE and the BNG (demarcation routers). Since Terragraph is
The goal of the integration approach was to reuse existing elements to a routed IPv6 only transport, a tunneling overlay was needed for ethernet
the extent possible, to avoid having to re-design standard operating connectivity to the demarcation routers from these CPEs.
functions. To make the integration simple with minimum impact and
changes to YTL Communications existing network elements, a pair of Similarly for public Wi-Fi access, a tunneling overlay was needed for
demarcation routers dedicated for the George Town Terragraph network ethernet connectivity between the WiFi access point and the demarcation
were hosted at YTL Communications data center in Kuala Lumpur. router/Wi-Fi Controller. This was achieved by using vendor proprietary
tunneling mechanisms like Ruckus soft GRE or Mikrotik EoIPv6 over the
The two services offered over the Terragraph network were fixed wireless Terragraph IPv6 only network.
access to businesses and households and Public Wi-Fi access, within the
George Town city. The primary functions of demarcation routers are
BNG, DHCP server, IPv6 L2 tunnel terminator and core routing.

CPE
60GHz
CPE Backhaul
(Client Node + Mesh Network)
MPLS+DWDM+MW
WIFI

CPE
60GHz MPLS+DWDM+MW 10G
Router - Tunnel Termination
CPE Backhaul
(BNG, DHCP) Internet
(Client Node + Mesh Network)

WIFI
10G

CPE
MPLS+DWDM+MW
60GHz Ruckus Wi-fi
CPE Backhaul Controller
(Client Node + Mesh Network)
WIFI
17 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 18

CPE Platform Public Wi-Fi :

Three different AP make/models were selected for this service based on
Fixed Wireless Access: our requirement to support L2 tunneling over IPv6. Below are the three AP
Two different Mikrotik CPE models were selected for this service, again models and their details:
based on our requirement to support L2 tunneling over IPv6. Below are
the two CPE models and their details: 1. Ruckus T300: Supports Ruckus Soft GRE (L2) tunneling over IPv6. The
device features dual-band 2x2:2 Wi-Fi omni directional, 1Gbps PoE in
1. RB750GL: Supports a vendor-specific implementation of ethernet port, Multi rate, multi channel support and is able to forward upto 1Gbps
over IPv6 (EoIPv6). The device features 5 x 1G copper ports and is over stacked tunnels (tested)
able to forward upto 100Mbps over stacked tunnels (tested) 2. Mikrotik WAP AC: Supports a vendor-specific implementation of
2. RB750GR3 hEX: Supports a vendor-specific implementation of ethernet over IPv6 (EoIPv6) and capwap over IPv6. The device features
ethernet over IPv6 (EoIPv6). The device features 5 x 1G copper ports dual-band 2x2:2 Wi-Fi omni directional, 1Gbps PoE in port, Multi rate,
with 1G passive PoE in port and is able to forward upto 100Mbps over multi channel support and is able to forward upto 300Mbps (tested).
stacked tunnels (tested) 3. Mikrotik mANTBox 2 12s: Supports a vendor-specific implementation
of ethernet over IPv6 (EoIPv6) and capwap over IPv6. The device features
Long-range 12 dbi, 120° integrated Base Station for 2.4 GHz, sector
antennas, 1Gbps passive PoE in port, Multi rate, multi channel support
and is able to forward upto 300Mbps (tested).

For layer-2 transport, the Mikrotik APs and CPEs support vendor-specific
implementation of ethernet over IPv6 (EoIPv6). In order to terminate
the layer-2 tunnels at the core, a pair of Mikrotik CCR1036-8G-2S+
demarcation routers were selected. This router model features 8 x 1G
copper connections and 2 SPF+ (10G) making it well suited to connect
Terragraph “fiber point-of-presence” nodes. The Mikrotik APs/CPEs and
routers would book-end the Terragraph IPv6 mesh, effectively making
it transparent to YTL Communications network by making simple L2
circuits. Similarly the Ruckus T300 APs terminate soft GRE L2 tunnels at
the Ruckus Wi-Fi Controller that’s connected behind the
demarcation routers.
 19 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 20

Service Model
Two different service models were deployed in the George Town trial: Public Wi-Fi
Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) and Public Wi-Fi. Similar to Mikrotik CPEs, the Mikrotik Access points serving Public Wi-Fi
access to users establishes pseudowires to the EoIPv6 tunnel terminator
Fixed Wireless Access (Mikrotik demarcation routers in YTL Communications Data Center). The
With point-to-point layer-2 tunnels in place between the BNG Ruckus APs on the other hand, establishes Soft GRE tunnels with the Wi-
(demarcation routers) and subscriber CPEs, the service model is exactly Fi Controller connected behind the demarcation routers.
the same as it would be with any other fixed access solution. Once
connected to the Terragraph network via a client node, the Mikrotik The demarcation router does DHCPv4 allocation and further does NAT44
CPE establishes pseudo-wires to the EoIPv6 tunnel terminator (Mikrotik allowing internet access to Wi-Fi users. User are redirected to a captive
demarcation routers in YTL Communications Data Center). A PPPoE portal login page , where they can login through their social media login
dialer in the CPE establishes connectivity to the BNG (demarcation router) credentials to access the internet.
using pre-configured user credentials, thus enabling internet access. User
profiles with different rate limits are created in the BNG and the CPEs are
provisioned according to the user subscription.

IPv4 path TCP/IP PPPoE/PPP EoIPv6 Tunnel PPPoE/PPP TCP/IP IPv4 path TCP/IP EoIPv6 / Soft GRE L2 Tunnel TCP/IP

IPv6 path Native ipv6 IPv6 path Native ipv6

YTL Communications YTL Communications

IGW service_VRF MKT Router DC IGW service_VRF MKT Router DC
v6 YTL v6 YTL
v6 v4/v6 v6 v4/v6
Communications Communications
TG IPv6 mesh ipv4/ipv6 Internet TG IPv6 mesh ipv4/ipv6 Internet
backbone backbone
IGW Internet_VRF IGW Internet_VRF

v6
Ruckus
CPE PPPoE Tunnel Controller
(Ipv4)
Ethernet

WS 1 WS 2 WS 3 End users (v4 only) Wifi users (v4 only)

v6 v4/v6 v6 v4/v6
21 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 22
All in all, YTL Communications used 163 poles in the George Town
heritage area to support:

Permitting and Related Permissions • 472 Terragraph nodes

• 50 Public Wi-Fi Hotspots

To meet national and state specific regulatory requirements, YTL
• 120 Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) points
Communications had to obtain certain permits prior to initiation of
the trial, this included: The deployment of the Terragraph nodes was staged in five of George
Town covering approx. 2.5 square kilometers. By resourcefully splitting
• Equipment type approval: the Terragraph radios required type
the day into two halves - night time for installation and day time for fine
approval from SIRIM for importation to Malaysia.
tuning and commissioning - the YTL Communications team was able to
• Local authority: Given that George Town is a UNESCO complete the entire deployment in 2.5 months.
heritage zone deployment of any equipment in the area
requires approval by local authorities and deployment is to be
done in line with guidelines from UNESCO and the City Council
of Penang Island and its Technical Committee and City Council
Engineering Department. The project was also presented and
approved by the Penang State Executive Council.

In terms of the spectrum usage, the V-band in Malaysia is under class

assignment for short range devices and does not require a license for an
Figure 05 | Deployment options for a given lamp pole Figure 06 | Location of all the Terragraph nodes
operator to utilize.

Installation and Customer Provisioning

A key advantage of Terragraph is the compact and lightweight design and
the ultra-low power consumption characteristics of the nodes. As a result,
there is no need to erect new telco structures for the sake of deployment.
YTL Communications instead opted to use existing structures such as
lamp posts to co-locate the Terragraph nodes on to them.
Figure 07 | YTL Communications used skylifts to install at
night, and used daytime to perform electrical remediation
and power commissioning

Figure 08 | Electrical remediation and power commissioning

23 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 24

Customer Provisioning Step 3 - Customer Provisioning and Testing

A second visit to the customer would be made by a provisioning
As this is a new technology, the YTL Communications team opted to technician to connect and configure the CPE device. This step could be
recruit trial customers based on their existing broadband quality and collapsed into step 2 with additional training of the installation staff, or
performing site assessment of coverage. The process can be broken even completely automated, however for the purposes of the trial it was
down into 3 steps: more straightforward to have this as a separate step. The technician
would connect the CPE and execute a template based configuration
Step 1 - Expression of Interest file, as well as perform any configuration changes required on the head

YTL Communications staff visited businesses in the coverage area end router performing tunnel termination of the CPE devices. Once end

offering a free trial service for fixed wireless access for a duration of 6 to end connectivity was established the connection would be tested for

months. The YTL Communications staff would start by performing a basic throughput and stability, and after successful completion the service

line of sight check from the premise to the existing distribution node (DN) would be handed over to the customer.

network. Businesses whose premise had line of sight and that wished
to participate then signed a trial agreement and a time for installation
was booked. An initial desktop analysis of the location was performed
to determine if any additional DN was required to be installed in order to
connect to the client node (CN) location.

Step 2 - Site Survey and Physical Installation

If an additional DN installation was required to provide connectivity
to the premise this would be installed during low foot traffic hours
(between 10pm and 6am). For the customer premise installation a
team of 2 installers would attend the location to identify and agree
with the customer on the CN installation location and cable run to the
desired CPE location. The physical installation would then take place
and would take up to 2 hours, mostly depending on the complexity of
the cable run. Once the physical installation was completed the CN
was powered on and the installer app used to upload the node details
to the NMS, bringing the Terragraph link online. If any issues occurred
with this process the technician would contact the network operations
center to provision the link.
25 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 26

Corporate Social Responsibility Product and Network Improvements During Trial Period
As George Town is a historic city, the YTL Communications team encountered Given the size and length of the trial there were numerous opportunities
a number of issues during the installation process. YTL Communications took to conduct tests, gain learnings and introduce product and network
the opportunity to repair and provide a complete health check of the utilities as improvements, such as:
a corporate social responsibility service to Penang:
• Several Terragraph software version upgrades
• 450 MBPP poles had been remediated to allow for safe and • Feature enhancements including improvements to Automatic
stable supply of electricity Beam Forming, automation of network optimization
• 35 Feeder Pillars remediated to allow continuous power procedures, and network performance statistics and events
supply to aid in troubleshooting

• Physical isolation of electrical phases for existing lamps • Major software bug fixes to increase network stability and
and new Terragraph nodes for all 450 poles improvements to re-routing

• Replacements of faulty underground cables with new There were several changes to the network topology undertaken during the
overhead power cables of up to 3000 meter in length trial period to improve performance, in addition to continuous maintenance
• 150 units of street light poles refreshed with new activities related to power, foliage trimming and equipment replacement.
service boards
We believe the trial in George Town has contributed to evolving the
• 450 new sets of neutral link bars replaced
Terragraph technology, the enhancements made will improve the
• Physical inspection and electrical ‘health check’ for all 450
performance and robustness of the product. During the trial 8 major
units of street light poles
updates to Terragraph software were released which included 48 feature
enhancements and 25 software fixes. Along with this the deployment
guidelines were enhanced to capture what was learned from the trial in
George Town, particularly related to the deployment of CN nodes in
narrow streetscapes.
27 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 28

Trial Outcomes
YTL Communications has operated the Terragraph network in George
Town for over 6 months providing free public Wi-Fi coverage at 50 locations
and fixed wireless access services to 120 premises. The network consists
of 472 Terragraph nodes connecting 283 locations (163 light poles +
120 customer premises) in a mesh network consisting of 296 links. The
network was deployed in 2.5 months, including remediation of the electrical
connection to the poles to provide 24hr power, deploying the Terragraph
distribution network and then the customer premise equipment.
Figure 09 | Awareness campaign to promote the various
A - Free Public Wi-Fi locations we have installed Public Wi-Fi

As of 1st November, 2019, the public Wi-Fi service has so far provided
connectivity to over 33,000 unique users with a high-quality Wi-Fi
experience, with peak download speeds of up to 190mbps and average
speeds of better than 50Mbps.

To ensure fair usage, YTL Communications created a social login

experience that supports Android, iOS plus all popular desktop
browsers. Once authenticated, users are given one hour of login, but YTL
Communications does not restrict the number of times a user can login in
each day and there is no speed cap to ensure the user will experience the
best speed his device is capable of.
Figure 10 | Wi-FI usage metrics as of 26th September, 2019
29 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 30

B - FWA (Fixed Wireless Access) “YES Team has been very helpful with all support from setting until
troubleshooting. Terragraph has provided consistent speed and reliability
During the trial period fixed wireless access (FWA) users were experiencing
throughout the trial period.”
speeds 10-172 times faster than their previous copper-based connections.
- Pang Jia Woei, Director, Holly Group Sdn Bhd
The number of FWA customers was restricted to 120 for the trial period due
to the use of prototype hardware. However, given the size and density of
“It was easy enough to get started with connecting and setup due do help from
the distribution network many more customers could be served from the the ‘YES’ team. From then on it was just relatively plug and play. Great job ‘YES’
existing footprint. for this opportunity. Hope to see great things from you guys in the future.”

- Jesse Tan, Owner, Mugshoot Café and Rainforest Bakery

The Terragraph network was operational during the monsoon, rain,

tropical heat and humidity with the network maintaining a high degree of “Its very fast, and stable. Appreciate the fast internet speed.”
availability and performance. Facebook has also previously conducted - Wayne Ng Yung Wei, Director, Spark Optics Sdn Bhd
tests of rain fade on network performance in San Jose and Jakarta with
satisfactory results. “We have been using YTL YES Terragraph for the past few months now. The
connection is quiet good and steady except for a few and rare glitches. For a
service that’s new in the market, it’s quiet reliable and good to use.”
A sample of trial Customer Testimonials:
- Mohamed Imran, CEO, S.M.N. Shaik Mohamed Sdn Bhd
“YES Terragraph really delivers the speed that we need. The staff is very
responsive, courteous and helpful when you need help from them. Highly
“YES Internet has good coverage in whole property of Campbell House.
recommend to anyone in this area.”
Connection is Fast and reliable. Service support we receive from Mr Lim who
- Stephen Ng, Head of IT, Clan Kongsi Hotel introduced us to YES is excellent! He is 24hrs available to any questions and
assistance we needed. George Town needs this kind of internet and service,
especially to hotel accommodation like us. Keep it up YES TEAM!!”
“We are satisfied with your service on the internet access”
- Vanessa Arzadon, Front Office Manager, Campbell House
- NL Loh, Managing Director, Hotel Hong Ping

“Service has been excellent!”

“I am very satisfied with the service provided by YTL YES Terragraph Market Trail.
- Dr Ooi Kah Theang, Director, Klinik Ooi KT
They provide us with sufficient information and resources when we asked for aid.
Our problems and feedbacks were entertained and resolved immediately when we
“Using YTL YES around 6 months, never been uninterrupted connection like give feedback. The Internet connection is strong and the speed is above average”
other ISP, smooth and faster, also the customer care act fast if any power failure - Ooi Geok Choo, Resident
occurred. Thank you for the excellent service.”

- Ameen, Director, Crescent Fastprint

“YES Terragraph given a very consistence & fast speed. The staff very polite,
efficient and deliver good service to customers. Overall performance very satisfied
with this internet provider.”

- Sariel Leong, Admin Executive, Penang Heritage Trust

31 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 32

“Thank you for your introducing the option to test YTL network services. We are, “Very Satisfied, will support YTL Terragraph.”
so far , satisfied with the performance of the network, thank you for giving special
- Mr. Neyvinthyran s/o gunasekaran, Director, NS Chulia Enterprise
care during the initial phase. We hope YTL YES will continue to provide consistent
quality service and I will definitely recommend your product for other users in the
area.” “I am Satisfied with YES Terragraph.”
- Lily Aziz, Property Management and Homestay, 95 Armenian Street - Ms Leong, Owner, HY Hai Lean Trading

“We have been using YTL YES Terragraph Market Trial since Apr-2019, and I have “I am Satisfied with YES Terragraph.”
to say that its excellent support. No more complaints about slow internet, internet
- Ong Seng Keat, Owner, Yin and Sourdough Bakery & Cafe
down, can’t do our work.”

- Mandy Tan, Admin Executive, Lean Giap Group of Companies

“We are satisfy with YES terragraph to manage a higher speed and better stability
Which has speed up our work day and their customer service/supports always so
supportive, passionate and efficient. Good work, THANK YOU x 3000!”

- Chuah, Purchasing Executive, Sim Supplies Sdn Bhd

“Representing Loft 29 to appreciate Yes for letting us trying out the Terragraph
that you have installed last few months. It was an amazing experience knowing
that in Heritage area we could have fast speed internet.”

-Timothy Poy, Event Officer, City Light Consulting Sdn Bhd

“Am happy to state that the speed of YTL Terragraph is very much better than
what we had and much more stable. Also note that the response time and
rectification is also excellent and hope this is sustained.”

- Oo Huei Ying, Managing Director, SKI Wealth Sdn Bhd

“Very satisfied with our good service and fast respond. Hope continue to use your
service for long term.”

- Fang Siew Poh, Director, Islander Lodge

“Very satisfied with YES Terragraph and good feedback from Homestay guests”

- Jeffry, Owner, Nadyah Star Global (Zaras Gallery)

33 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 34

mmWave feasibility in APAC urban environments

George Town Takeaways
George Town has a morphology of narrow streets, with 2+ story shop
Time and cost to deploy houses situated at the edge of the sidewalk. This is an environment that
The Terragraph network in George Town offered huge advantages in is quite common in the Asia Pacific region, but one which Terragraph had
time to deploy and deployment logistics. Terragraph has enabled Gigabit not previously been deployed. Through the use of advanced planning
level speeds using existing street furniture and power assets with a tools which optimized the point to point line of sight link design the
rapid deployment time of 2.5 months. Based on the results from trial and network was able to be planned and deployed in a short time frame.
detailed analysis of commercialization costs we estimate Terragraph total Terragraph, with its street level deployment, was also proven to be
cost of ownership (TCO) to be more than 40% lower than that of trenched an efficient and high performance way to provide connectivity in an
fiber. With the George Town network now reaching operational “steady environment where fiber deployment would have been challenging.
state”, OpEx will also be measured and factored into the cost analysis.

Availability and performance

Public/Private partnership
The Terragraph network in George Town has achieved availability of
This trial employed a unique value exchange model in cooperation
99.5%, which is viewed as a reasonable threshold for broadband
with the local government. The local government saw value in YTL
internet service. One of the main challenges in terms of availability has
Communications offering a free public Wi-Fi network in the George
been power interruption. Street furniture owners, and their operations
Town heritage area and facilitated access to its street furnitures. Access
teams, were not accustomed to the 24/7 power requirements of telecom
to street furniture during the trial period was provided by the local
networks as they conduct maintenance activities which led to outages.
government in exchange for YTL Communications offering a free public
In George Town this was overcome by working collaboratively with the
Wi-Fi network in the George Town heritage area. This is an example of a
stakeholders to plan works and by leveraging Terragraph’s mesh network
model that network operators and asset owners can engage in to provide
capabilities so that they could be completed without impacting service.
greater value to both parties beyond that which could be achieved under
Another area of learning is foliage management which is not specific to
a simple asset lease arrangement.
Terragraph but any millimeter wave technologies including 5G. Through
the George Town trial, Facebook has tuned the system management tool
to better detect radio feedback from foliage so that operators can take
preemptive actions to trim excessive foliage when detected.
35 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 36

In case of a failed link or radio frequency impairment, Terragraph

technology allows for layer 3 route convergence with Open/R in sub-100
milliseconds, resulting in no perceivable impact for users. In addition, Building on the 802.11ad standard is one of the approaches that is
Open/R allows for MCS (modulation and coding scheme) based routing being proposed that utilize the significant 60 GHz bandwidth and WiGig
that offers automatic path switching with changes in link performances. technology elements to form novel network topologies in addition to
These features mitigate unexpected changes in the environment, such as established point-to-point and point-to-multipoint topologies. Draft 2.1 of
weather, power instability and foliage. 802.11ay, the successor standard to 802.11ad, was released in October
2018 and defines support for a broad set of use-cases ranging from
the mmWave Mesh Network Usage Model in support of Fixed Wireless
5G Co-Existence and Standardization
Access deployment scenarios, as well as wireless virtual/augmented
5G is the next generation of mobile access technology. Promising gigabit reality, networking, and mobile. The technologies defined in 802.11ay
level speeds to fixed and mobile terminals, early deployments have enable operation in both line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight environments.
already commenced. Like Terragraph, some versions of 5G networks plan Non-line-of-sight operation exploits alternate paths generated by
to operate in 24, 26 and 28 GHz mmWave bands, utilizing larger channel deterministic reflectors which exist at 60 GHz.
bandwidth than typical low-band spectrum to provide much higher
data-rates and lower latencies than existing 4G networks. Subsequent improvements to 802.11ay specification include techniques
for managing interference and coexistence in high density scenarios
Terragraph is a potential enabler for 5G. As 5G networks begin to deploy including those with multi-hop multi-point network topologies. Key
high speed services, Terragraph networks can provide Gbps-speed innovations include scheduled media access control, more efficient beam-
transport “fiber replacement” for both Wi-Fi 6 access points and some forming protocols catering to different usages, peak data rates in excess
versions of 5G commercial deployments. Recently, a demonstration from of 100 Gbps, support for cloud-based link planning, and advanced
a 5G vendor connected a mobile terminal using WiGiG as an access layer coding schemes that enable predictable performance in a complex
to Terragraph as a backhaul link to produce above 1.6 Gbps speeds in a mesh deployment with a single frequency network. Participation and
commercial mobile terminal which perfectly matches the speeds from 5G support for 802.11ay have expanded to include not only semiconductor
commercial equipment that is being deployed. manufacturers but also communications system vendors, consumer
internet and services companies and network service providers. Building
Standardization often leads to widespread adoption, and this has been on the work at IEEE, there is now an ongoing effort to create a certification
true for 802.11ad. The huge global demand for spectrum capacity is program for fixed wireless in the Wi-Fi Alliance.
driving investment in 60 GHz band unlicensed technologies for fixed
wireless access, wireless backhaul and short-range uses, particularly
as the technology is evolving to allow for non-line-of-sight applications.
37 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 38

Outlook
The trial in George Town is a robust demonstration of Terragraph as a In closing, YTL Communications and Facebook would like to extend
Public Wi-Fi and fixed wireless access solution, delivering high-speed our appreciation to the Ministry of Multimedia and Communication of
Wi-Fi and fiber-like performance to residential customers at a fraction Malaysia, Malaysia Communication and Multimedia Commission, the
of the cost of buried fiber. The trial outcomes support the case for the State Government of Penang along with the City Council of Penang Island
commercial viability of Terragraph, and its potential to make a real impact for the invaluable support to make this large scale market trial a reality.
towards the connectivity goal of Malaysia’s National Fiberization and Their collective contributions to this trial has resulted in the acceleration of
Connectivity Plan. the commercialisation of Terragraph which we hope will benefit cities and
communities globally.
The commercial outlook for widespread Terragraph networks is
strengthening. First, Qualcomm is creating the world’s first Terragraph
chipset family (based on the IEEE 802.11ay standard). Not only Fixed
Wireless Access (FWA) and Wi-Fi transport is provided, but mobile
backhaul to 4G and some 5G architectures is supported on Day 1 and
peak speeds at the physical layer of up to 10 Gbps will be possible.
Second, a large and growing number of commercial Original Equipment
Manufacturers (OEMs) have signed on to manufacture Terragraph
products including: Radwin, Cambium, Siklu, IgniteNet and Mikrotik.
These vendors will have commercial-grade Terragraph products based
on the Qualcomm chipsets giving service providers a choice of standards
based offerings. Third, the growing list of countries de-licensing the
V-Band makes the trajectory look increasingly like the Wi-Fi marketplace:
a growing ecosystem of devices, services and tools for deployment.
39 | Terragraph Terragraph trial in George Town, Malaysia 40

References
1. https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/m/en_us/solutions/service-provider/vni- 11. Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) Market (IEEE 802.11ad, 60 GHz, 7Gbps Wi-Fi,
forecast-highlights/pdf/Asia_Pacific_2021_Forecast_Highlights.pdf Wireless Gigabit Alliance, Access Points, Routers, Residential Gateways,
Backhaul Equipment) - Worldwide Forecasts, Business Models,
2. https://www.nfcp.my/ Technology Roadmap and Analysis (2014 - 2019) available at http://www.
marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/wigig.asp.
3. https://telecominfraproject.com/
12. Id.; “EdgeHaul™ Millimeter Wave Small Cell Backhaul System,” available at
4. https://www.yes.my/media-centre/Terragraph http://www.interdigital.com/presentations/edgehaul-millimeter-wave-small-
cell-backhaul-system.
5. https://www.skmm.gov.my/skmmgovmy/media/General/pdf/Class-
Assignment-No-1-of-2017-15112017.pdf 13. Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) Market (IEEE 802.11ad, 60 GHz, 7Gbps Wi-Fi,
Wireless Gigabit Alliance, Access Points, Routers, Residential Gateways,
6. https://mypenang.gov.my/culture-heritage/heritage-zones/ Backhaul Equipment) - Worldwide Forecasts, Business Models,
Technology Roadmap and Analysis (2014 - 2019) available at http://www.
7. See Mario Giovanni Luigi Frecassetti, ETSI White Paper No. 9, E-Band and marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/wigig.asp.
V-Band Survey on status of worldwide regulation at 4 (June 2015) available
at https://www.etsi.org/images/files/ETSIWhitePapers/etsi_wp9_e_band_
and_v_band_survey_20150629.pdf; see also Dan Jones, Light Reading,
60 GHz: A Frequency to Watch (July 10, 2014) available at http://www.
lightreading.com/mobile/backhaul/60ghz-a-frequency-to-watch/d/d-
id/709910 (noting investments made in 60 GHz technology driven by WiGig
and wireless backhaul).

8. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED WiGig™ brings multi-gigabit performance to Wi-Fi®

devices, https://www.wi-fi.org/news-events/newsroom/wi-fi-certified-wigig-
brings-multi-gigabit-performance-to-wi-fi-devices. learn more at terragraph.com

9. HiSilicon Receives WiGigTM Certification from Wi-Fi Alliance for the

Industry’s Most Integrated 60 GHz Solution, http://www.hisilicon.com/en/
Media-Center/News/CES2018_hisilicon_60gwifi.

10. Id; “EdgeHaul™ Millimeter Wave Small Cell Backhaul System,” available at
http://www.interdigital.com/presentations/edgehaul-millimeter-wave-small-
cell-backhaul-system.