In the not too distant future, virtual tourism may become a “thing.” Thanks to 5G connectivity, we’ll be able to experience a tourist attraction without physically being there. On Monday, 20 January, Malaysian Finance Minister Lim Guang Eng had the opportunity to experience just that—he “visited” Gunung Machinchang, Langkawi in real-time from Cyberjaya, approximately 500 kilometres away.
Armed with a VR headset, Lim was able to witness a real-time 360-degree broadcast of the famous mountain in ultra-high definition and in lag-free fashion. The demonstration was part of a tour of Rekascape where the 5G OpenLab by Digi and Cyberview was set up.
Digi has a virtual tourism experience set up at the Langkawi International Airport (LIA) to give visitors a similar experience. A camera mounted at the Langkawi SkyCab middle station livestreams footage of Gunung Machinchang to visitors at the airport.
The showcase is open to the public and runs until March 2020.
The virtual tourism showcase was hosted by Digi in collaboration with Malaysian Airports and Panorama Langkawi, the first such use case in the 5G Demonstration Projects (5GDP) initiative. The 5GDP in Langkawi is part of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC)’s efforts to facilitate, develop and foster 5G use cases in a live but controlled environment.
5GDP in Langkawi involved 35 use cases in six verticals at 25 live 5G sites, actively operating since October 2019 and will continue until March 2020, with a total investment of MYR101 million.
Malaysia is on track to roll out 5G commercially in the third quarter of 2020, as announced by Malaysian premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad recently. The MCMC said Malaysia has laid the foundation to be at the frontier in deploying 5G in Southeast Asia.
