Spectrum gap analysis with practical solutions for future mobile data traffic growth in Malaysia

In this paper, an efficient spectrum forecasting model is developed to estimate the required spectrum and calculate the spectrum gap in future. This developed model is essentially based on five main metrics and one constant. The five main metrics are the currently available spectrum, sites number growth, data traffic growth, average network utilization, and spectrum efficiency growth. The constant metric is considered to give a space for our model to be used in another country or when a new technology is coming. This developed model is then used to forecast the required spectrum and spectrum gap for Malaysia in 2020. The estimation is performed based on the input market data of four main mobile telecommunication operators in Malaysia: Maxis, Celcom, Digi, and U-Mobile. The input data for this model are collected from various sources, such as the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, OpenSignal, Analysys Mason, GSMA, and HUAWEI. The results indicate that by 2020, Malaysia will require around 307 MHz of additional spectrum to fulfill the enormous increase of mobile data demands. Addressing this increment can be achieved by launching additional spectrum bands, enhancing spectrum efficiency, off-loading mobile data to unlicensed bands or deploying more site numbers.