This article appeared in Lowyat.net on 14 October 2022.

Local telco Yes has announced its first Experience Store at Lot 10, Bukit Bintang. For the most part, this store serves the same purpose as any other of its physical stores. That is, to sign up for the telco’s plans, as well as getting a mobile device to go with it. But the one key difference with the Experience Store is that it allows potential customers to experience the telco’s 5G wireless broadband, which powers the entire store.

Attached to this particular Yes Experience Store is a cafe a modular community space which the telco dubs the 5G Experience Centre. The space is open to everyone, and those who visit can experience the Yes 5G connectivity for themselves, via the Infinite Gateway router. The telco says that in addition to visitors to the cafe, the space is also open for private or corporate functions, such as co-working sessions, conferences, tech hackathons, and even gaming tournaments.

The idea here is to allow the public to experience what Yes 5G has to offer for themselves in this Experience Centre space. And if they decide that they want the same for their home or mobile devices, then they sign up for either the Wireless Fibre plan, the FT5G prepaid plan, or the Infinite and Infinite Plus postpaid plans. This is done at the more traditional section of the Experience Store, where visitors can also experience other applications of 5G, including VR.

Yes intends to expand the Experience Stores to other states in the future, minus the cafe. Wing K Lee, CEO of YTL Communications, mentions the Yes Store in Queensbay Mall, Pulau Pinang, being next in line. Speaking of which, the island was added to the still relatively small list of places with 5G coverage last month, if only the eastern side of the island.