The RM11 billion cost for the deployment of Malaysia’s fifth-generation (5G) network and ecosystem is lower than the initial estimate of RM15 billion, Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz said.

Zafrul said that the National 5G Task Force report which estimated a budget of RM7.5 billion only takes into account the cost of network coverage and not any investments needed in that capacity.

“The task force report also stated that the listed cost was an indicative estimate and not definitive, which was dependent on a few subjective...