U Mobile signs on big-name partners for neutral 5G-A sandbox

Details: John Tanner; Category: Enterprise Ecosystems; 30 January 2026; 925 views

Malaysian 5G telco U Mobile said on Thursday it will launch a neutral sandbox for enterprises to develop 5G-Advanced use cases, and has already signed on several big-name ecosystem partners to support the project.

U Mobile said the Enterprise Innovation Platform (EIP) aims to provide an agnostic environment for enterprises, SMEs, start-ups, academia and public sector agencies to develop and commercialise their 5G-A use cases, proofs-of-concepts and pilot projects.

A physical EIP Hub and sandbox – slated to launch in July 2026 – will feature an integrated innovation sandbox with 5G-A, cloud and edge access, IoT device lab, private network zones and live demo zones, and variety of tools such as network slicing simulators, digital twin environments and AR/VR toolkits to ensure innovation solutions or test cases are validated and deployable in a real-world environment.

U Mobile said that Amazon Web Services (AWS), Huawei Malaysia, Palo Alto Networks and Qualcomm have signed on to EIP as anchor partners, providing foundational technologies and core capabilities that support the EIP Hub and sandbox environment.

Meanwhile, Braintree Technologies, China Mobile International, Meraque Group and ZTE Malaysia are onboard as technology partners, bringing applied tools and vertical expertise to advance the development and validation of enterprise use cases.

U Mobile CTO Woon Ooi Yuen said that while the EIP Hub will be powered by the telco’s ULTRA5G network, the hub itself will be neutral and open to anyone, not just U Mobile customers.

“The partners we introduced today, who are global and local technology leaders in their own right, represent just the start and the list is expected to grow to meet evolving innovation needs,” he said in a statement.