MTN Nigeria has announced that it will commence deployment of the 5G technology in Nigeria before 2020. This will enable the company to provide better data services at a more affordable cost to its subscribers. This was announced by the Chief Executive Officer, MTN Nigeria, Ferdi Moolman in Lagos while speaking at the ICT CEO forum, stated that the 5G technology would attract investment in health, education and business.
“In 2017, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Ericsson to collaborate on the rollout of 5G infrastructure in South Africa as a trial. We have also tested 5G use cases, which we believe will get us ready for commercial deployment before the year 2020,” he said.
This is coming after the completion of the first 5G technology and application trials in South Africa in partnership with Ericsson, in which the telco achieved a throughput of over 20Gbps with less than five minutes’ latency in the 5G trial.
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The company described the speed as the highest achieved on any mobile network in Africa.
Moolman maintained that some part of the technology would be deployed in Nigeria to drive advancement in health diagnosis and education, among other areas.
He called for a more conducive business environment and protection of telecom infrastructure in order to attract investment envisaged when the technology is deployed.
“5G will make our life better, drive incremental capacity and open up new businesses. MTN as a company is constantly making efforts to break barriers by democratising voice and data connectivity in order to improve subscriber experience, and has invested over N800bn in infrastructure in Nigeria.”
MTN had tested a range of 5G use cases and applications in its test lab proof of concept in South Africa, and promised to continue to identify 5G use cases and applications for the digital transformation of industries such as mining, transportation, agriculture, manufacturing and utilities.