Why Unlicensed Band Radio is Changing the Economics of Backhaul

The licensed microwave trap

Point-to-point microwave backhaul has been the backbone of enterprise and government connectivity in Malaysia for the better part of three decades. The model is well understood: you identify two sites, conduct a link budget analysis, select your frequency band, submit an application to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), wait for spectrum assignment, pay your fees, install your equipment, and go live. For large-capacity, long-distance links, this is still exactly how it should work.

But the model carries costs that are easy to underestimate when you are deploying one or two links. They become much harder to ignore when you are managing a network of ten, twenty, or fifty links — and when the bandwidth those links must carry is doubling every two to three years.

Licensed spectrum in Malaysia is not free. Depending on the band, a single licensed Point-to-Point (PtP) link costs between RM 3,500 and RM 8,000 per year in spectrum fees alone — and that is before you factor in the MCMC application processing time of three to six months, the internal engineering and documentation overhead, and the annual renewal process that repeats indefinitely for the life of the link. E-band links (71–76 GHz / 81–86 GHz), which are popular for high-capacity urban hops, sit at the higher end of that range per link pair. Multiply that across a medium-sized government or enterprise network with, say, 20 active links, and your spectrum fee bill alone is comfortably in the hundreds of thousands of ringgit over a five-year period — before a single router has been purchased.

More damaging than the direct cost is the time cost. A licensed link cannot be deployed in response to an urgent operational need. The three-to-six-month MCMC approval window is a structural constraint. Organisations that have discovered this the hard way — when a site needed connectivity yesterday and the licensing queue said “next quarter” — understand precisely why the search for alternatives has become serious.

The licensed microwave model is not broken. For what it was designed to do — provide guaranteed spectrum exclusivity on long-distance, high-capacity, mission-critical links — it delivers exactly that. The problem is that it is being applied indiscriminately to scenarios where that exclusivity is neither necessary nor financially rational. A 3km inter-building link on a university campus does not have the same requirements as a 45km backbone hop between two telco exchange nodes. Treating them identically, as many procurement frameworks currently do, is where the cost trap closes.

What unlicensed band radio actually is

Unlicensed band radio is not a single technology. It is a collection of frequency bands and standards that share one common characteristic: they do not require an individual spectrum licence from a regulator before you can use them. In Malaysia, MCMC has exempted several frequency ranges from individual licensing requirements, which means equipment operating within those exemptions can be deployed immediately, without a regulatory queue.

There are three bands worth understanding in detail for backhaul purposes in the Malaysian context.

5.8 GHz — the versatile workhorse

The 5.8 GHz band (broadly the 5.725–5.850 GHz portion of the U-NII spectrum) is MCMC-exempt for short-range Point-to-Point applications in Malaysia. Equipment in this band is typically based on IEEE 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) or 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) chipsets, though purpose-built PtP radios from vendors such as Cambium Networks (the PTP 670 series), Ubiquiti (AirFiber AF-5XHD), and Mimosa Networks (the B5c and B5x) extend those chipsets with dedicated antenna systems, beam-steering, and interference mitigation features that have nothing in common with a home Wi-Fi router beyond the underlying modulation scheme. Mimosa in particular is worth noting for Malaysian deployments — the B5c's GPS synchronisation capability significantly reduces self-interference in dense multi-link environments such as industrial parks and multi-tenant towers, where co-channel interference is otherwise the primary limiting factor.

In Malaysia’s terrain — predominantly flat to rolling, with clear sightlines available across most of Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah, and Sarawak — 5.8 GHz links can operate reliably over distances of 20 to 30 kilometres with appropriate antenna gain and a clear line of sight. Throughput at these distances ranges from 300 Mbps to well over 1 Gbps depending on channel width, modulation scheme, and link margin. The rain fade impact in the 5.8 GHz band is measurable but manageable — tropical rainfall causes signal attenuation, but the relatively long wavelength of 5.8 GHz means this is a planning factor rather than a show-stopper. With a well-designed link margin of 15–20 dB built in at the planning stage, a 5.8 GHz PtP link can sustain service through Malaysia’s heaviest monsoon rainfall events.

60 GHz — millimetre-wave for short, dense hops

The 60 GHz band (the V-band, broadly 57–66 GHz) operates under the WiGig / IEEE 802.11ad and 802.11ay standards. Hardware from vendors such as Siklu (now part of Ceragon) operates in this band with purpose-built millimetre-wave radios designed specifically for short Point-to-Point links.

The headline number for 60 GHz is throughput: multi-gigabit links — 1.8 Gbps to 10 Gbps — within distances of roughly 500 metres. Within that range, 60 GHz delivers more raw bandwidth per link than most fibre connections available to enterprise customers in Malaysia at a competitive total cost. The trade-off is that the V-band is highly sensitive to atmospheric oxygen absorption and rainfall, and Malaysia’s consistently high humidity creates a more challenging propagation environment than you would find in a temperate climate. Beyond 500 metres in Malaysia, rain fade and oxygen absorption combine to significantly reduce reliability, which is why 60 GHz is best understood as a high-density intra-campus or intra-building-cluster technology rather than a general-purpose backhaul solution.

6 GHz — the emerging frontier

The 6 GHz band (5.925–7.125 GHz) is currently being evaluated by MCMC for unlicensed low-power indoor and standard-power outdoor use under the Wi-Fi 6E framework. Several jurisdictions — the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Brazil — have already allocated 1,200 MHz of contiguous spectrum in this band for unlicensed use, creating significant vendor investment in 6 GHz hardware. Malaysia’s regulatory position is still evolving as of mid-2025, but network planners who expect to be deploying infrastructure over the next three to five years should be watching MCMC’s 6 GHz position closely. When it opens, 6 GHz will offer a substantially cleaner unlicensed environment than the increasingly congested 5.8 GHz band.

Figure 1. Indicative 5-year total cost of ownership for a 4-link network, Malaysian market. Licensed figures include hardware and MCMC E-band spectrum fees at mid-range rates. Unlicensed figures include hardware only. Actual costs vary by specification and MCMC fee schedule.

The economics — with real numbers

Abstract arguments about licensing friction are one thing. The numbers are what move procurement decisions.

A licensed E-band PtP link in Malaysia — one of the most popular choices for high-capacity short-hop backhaul in dense urban environments — carries an MCMC spectrum fee in the range of RM 15,000 to RM 35,000 per year per link, depending on capacity tier, frequency assignment, and geographic zone. That figure recurs annually, for the life of the link, regardless of whether the link is performing well or whether your capacity requirement has changed. Stack in the MCMC application and administrative overhead — easily 40 to 60 person-hours per link application when you account for site surveys, Form PTA-1 preparation, supporting documentation, coordination with MCMC officers, and any follow-up — and the true cost of a licensed link is substantially higher than the published fee schedule suggests.

The approval timeline compounds this. The standard MCMC processing window for a spectrum assignment application is three to six months. In practice, first-time applicants and applications with complex frequency coordination requirements can take longer. For a brownfield upgrade — where an existing link needs to be replaced or augmented — this timeline is often simply incompatible with operational realities.

Contrast this with an unlicensed 5.8 GHz PtP deployment. Equipment cost for a quality commercial PtP link — Cambium PTP 670 or Ubiquiti AirFiber at the prosumer end — runs from RM 8,000 to RM 25,000 per link pair, including antenna systems and mounting hardware. Spectrum fee: zero. MCMC application processing time: zero. Deployment timeline from decision to live service: typically one to two weeks, including site surveys, equipment procurement, and installation. In urgent scenarios, Aminia has delivered fully operational links in under 48 hours from mobilisation.

Scale this across a network of four PtP links — a realistic footprint for a medium-sized government agency, university campus, or industrial park — and the five-year saving from switching eligible licensed links to unlicensed alternatives comfortably exceeds RM 120,000 on the spectrum fees alone, and can approach RM 500,000 when hardware cost differences are included. That is capital that can be redeployed to expand coverage, upgrade core infrastructure, or fund managed services.

Performance realities — when unlicensed works and when it does not

There is a version of this argument that oversimplifies. Unlicensed radio is not a universal replacement for licensed backhaul, and any network manager who deploys it on the assumption that it will perform identically to a licensed link in all scenarios will eventually find the assumption tested. The honest picture is more nuanced — and knowing the failure modes matters as much as knowing the use cases.

Where 5.8 GHz performs well in Malaysia

For links up to 20 to 30 kilometres in Malaysia’s predominantly flat and low-rise terrain — think inter-site links across the Klang Valley, links between government buildings in a district capital, or connections between logistics hubs in an industrial park — a well-designed 5.8 GHz PtP link with appropriate antenna gain (typically 28–30 dBi dish antennas) will deliver sustained throughput of 500 Mbps to 1 Gbps+ under clear conditions, with well-managed link availability during monsoon events if link margins have been correctly engineered.

The key planning discipline is rain fade margin. Malaysia experiences some of the highest annual rainfall rates in Southeast Asia, with the East Coast Peninsular and Sabah/Sarawak seeing particularly intense precipitation during the Northeast Monsoon (November to March). ITU-R rainfall zone N, which applies to much of Peninsular Malaysia, sees rain rates of approximately 95 mm/hr at the 0.01% exceedance level — the standard planning threshold for high-availability links. At 5.8 GHz, specific attenuation at this rain rate is roughly 0.01 dB/km, meaning rain fade on a 20 km link is approximately 0.2 dB — well within a properly engineered link margin. The practical conclusion: 5.8 GHz is robust against tropical rain fade at the distances relevant to most enterprise backhaul applications.

Where 60 GHz reaches its limits

At 60 GHz, the picture is different. Oxygen absorption at this frequency band is inherently high — approximately 15 dB/km — and rainfall attenuation at tropical rain rates compounds this to make links beyond 400–500 metres genuinely unreliable for high-availability applications in Malaysia’s climate. Within that range, 60 GHz is exceptional: it delivers multi-gigabit throughput (1.8 Gbps to 10 Gbps on current Siklu hardware), uses an extremely narrow beam that reduces interference, and has minimal interaction with adjacent-channel users. It is ideal for connections between adjacent buildings on a campus, between the main building and a data centre on the same site, or for very-high-capacity last-hundred-metre connections. Use it beyond its optimal range in Malaysia and you will encounter link instability during heavy rainfall that no amount of power increase can fully mitigate.

Interference in dense urban environments

The Klang Valley — Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya, Shah Alam, Subang Jaya — is one of the most RF-congested environments in Southeast Asia. The 5.8 GHz band in particular carries significant interference from consumer Wi-Fi networks, other unlicensed PtP deployments, and legacy equipment. In dense urban scenarios, unlicensed band PtP links require careful channel planning, polarisation coordination, and sometimes physical shielding to maintain clean operation. This is not a fundamental objection to unlicensed radio in urban areas, but it is a design requirement that must be built into the project from the site survey stage. Experienced vendors using frequency spectrum analysis tools at the planning stage can identify workable channels and beam orientations that avoid the worst interference sources.

When licensed still wins

There are scenarios where the licensed model is clearly the right answer, and where switching to unlicensed would be a false economy or an operational risk.

Figure 2. Side-by-side comparison of the three main frequency bands for backhaul in the Malaysian regulatory and environmental context. Hardware examples: Cambium PTP 670 / Ubiquiti AirFiber AF-5XHD / Mimosa B5c (5.8 GHz), Siklu EtherHaul / Ceragon (60 GHz), Ericsson MINI-LINK / Nokia Wavence (E-band licensed).

Links over 30 kilometres are the first category where licensed spectrum is generally the right call. At those distances, the power limits imposed on unlicensed equipment start to constrain link margin, and interference risk increases as the link path crosses more diverse terrain and potential interference sources. If you need a 45 km backbone hop with guaranteed availability, the right answer is a licensed microwave or licensed E-band link, full stop.

The second category is regulated telecommunications backhaul — if your link forms part of a licensed telco’s access or backhaul network carrying regulated traffic, MCMC’s licensing framework may impose an obligation to use licensed spectrum regardless of the technical merits of the alternative.

The third is mission-critical links where guaranteed spectrum exclusivity is a hard requirement — certain defence and public safety applications fall into this category. An unlicensed link, by definition, shares its spectrum with other users. In most practical scenarios this is manageable through proper link design and monitoring. In scenarios where a co-channel interferer appearing after deployment could not be tolerated operationally, licensed spectrum is the correct choice.

Malaysia-specific use cases

The economics and performance characteristics described above are not abstractions. They map directly to recurring infrastructure challenges that Malaysian network managers face today. The following segments represent the highest-value candidates for unlicensed band backhaul deployment in the current market.

Government affordable housing estates (PPR and PR1MA)

Malaysia’s Projek Perumahan Rakyat (PPR) and PR1MA housing programmes have created large residential complexes — sometimes comprising ten to twenty tower blocks within a compact site — that require inter-building network connectivity for management systems, CCTV, public Wi-Fi, and increasingly, broadband delivery to residents. The density of buildings within a single estate means inter-building distances are typically 100 to 800 metres, well within the optimal operating range of both 60 GHz and 5.8 GHz PtP links. The cost of deploying licensed microwave across a 15-building estate is disproportionate to the traffic volumes involved. Unlicensed PtP links between housing blocks are the obvious, economical answer — and they can be deployed without waiting for MCMC spectrum assignment.

Oil and gas onshore sites

Malaysia’s oil and gas sector operates a significant number of onshore processing facilities, tank farms, and terminal sites across Peninsular Malaysia and the interior of Sabah and Sarawak. These sites frequently require connectivity between multiple buildings, warehouses, control rooms, and accommodation blocks spread across a compound that might span one to five kilometres. Traditional wired connectivity across a flammable or hazardous-area compound carries significant civil engineering and compliance overhead. Unlicensed band radio links — particularly 5.8 GHz PtP between compound buildings — offer a clean alternative that eliminates trenching, reduces ATEX compliance complexity, and can be deployed rapidly. Petronas-registered vendors familiar with PETRONAS Technical Standards for wireless equipment can deliver compliant unlicensed radio installations that meet the sector’s specific safety requirements.

University campuses

Malaysia’s public university campuses — UTM Johor Bahru, UPM Serdang, UiTM Shah Alam, and dozens of other campuses across the country — are exactly the environment for which unlicensed PtP radio was designed. A large campus may have 30 to 60 buildings spread across one to three kilometres of land, with the main campus spine already served by fibre but outlying buildings and laboratories connected via legacy copper or microwave links that have not kept pace with research bandwidth demands. A 5.8 GHz or 60 GHz PtP overlay can add gigabit connectivity between any two buildings on a campus in days, without fibre trenching permits, contractor coordination, or spectrum licensing delays.

Industrial parks and ports

Industrial parks such as Shah Alam’s Section 23 industrial area, the Kulim Hi-Tech Park, and the port operations at Port Klang and Westports present similar characteristics: multiple tenants or operating units within a geographically compact area, each requiring connectivity that links back to a central exchange point. A shared unlicensed band PtP backbone within a park or port can provide high-bandwidth connectivity at a fraction of the cost of individual leased lines or individual licensed microwave links per tenant.

This last point bears emphasis because it is not hypothetical. Aminia has directly delivered a 1 Gbps unlicensed band PtP link for a government defence customer — replacing an underperforming legacy microwave connection — in under 48 hours from mobilisation to live service. The throughput delivered was 10 times greater than the link it replaced. The operational urgency that drove that requirement could not have been met through any licensed spectrum pathway. The existence of a technically viable, MCMC-exempt alternative made it possible to meet a hard deadline that would otherwise have forced a significant operational workaround for the customer’s network team.

Figure 3. Decision guide for choosing between unlicensed and licensed backhaul in the Malaysian context. These are planning heuristics, not rigid rules — a proper site survey and RF analysis should inform every deployment decision.

Who should be looking at this now

If you are reading this and you manage network infrastructure in Malaysia, there are three specific scenarios where it is worth initiating a review of your current backhaul approach before your next budget cycle.

The first is if you are currently paying MCMC spectrum fees on links that are under five kilometres long. This is the most straightforward case. A sub-5 km link at 5.8 GHz will typically deliver performance equivalent to a licensed microwave link at the same distance, at zero spectrum cost. If you have multiple such links — and many government agencies and large corporates do — the cumulative saving available by migrating those links to unlicensed radio is material. A link-by-link cost-benefit analysis takes a few hours. The savings accumulate every year thereafter.

The second is if you are planning a new network deployment in the next 12 months. This is the highest-value intervention point, because you have the opportunity to design for unlicensed from the outset rather than retrofitting it onto an existing architecture. Projects that begin with unlicensed radio as a primary design option rather than an afterthought consistently deliver lower total cost of ownership and faster time-to-service than projects that default to licensed microwave and then ask whether unlicensed could have been used.

The third is if you have multiple sites within 20 kilometres of each other that currently connect to a central exchange via individual leased lines or individual microwave links. A hub-and-spoke or mesh unlicensed radio network connecting these sites, with a single high-capacity fibre or licensed backbone feeding the hub, is almost always cheaper to build and operate than the per-site leased line model — particularly when four or more sites are involved.

The conversation about unlicensed band radio in Malaysian enterprise and government networks has been gathering momentum for the past few years, driven in part by the maturing of the 802.11ac and 802.11ax chipset ecosystem and the availability of purpose-built commercial PtP hardware that has largely closed the reliability gap with licensed equipment at distances under 20 km. The regulatory framework — MCMC’s exemption of 5.8 GHz for PtP use — has been in place long enough that it is no longer a novelty. What has been slower to change is the procurement reflex: the automatic reach for a licensed link specification without first asking whether it is actually required.

The economics are straightforward enough that this reflex is worth examining. Not every link should move to unlicensed radio. But many should — and the organisations that take the time to work out which ones will have a more capital-efficient network and faster deployment cycles than those that do not.

If you want to work through the specific numbers for your network, Aminia’s team is available to assist. We have delivered unlicensed band PtP backhaul across government, defence, oil and gas, and campus environments in Malaysia. The starting point is a site survey and a link budget — both of which we can arrange quickly.