South Africa beating Nigeria in 5G deployment race

THE HOPE THAT NIGERIA would not tarry in deploying 5G network on a commercial scale after successful trials by MTN Nigeria late 2019 is taking longer than expected to materialize.

This is particularly worrying experts in the telecoms industry given that other countries with smaller telecoms market, such as South Africa, are already taking the lead, leaving Nigeria to play catch up later in the future.

Although, just recently, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) commenced processes to formulate policy and framework for 5G deployment in Nigeria, this is coming when the third telecoms operator in SA, MTN South Africa, is about to roll out the service in that country.

MTN South Africa has announced it will launch 5G technology on a commercial scale in the country on June 30, 2020.

The company has planned a ceremony to this effect live on its YouTube channel.

The event will be cochaired by Godfrey Motsa, the CEO; Mapula Bodibe, chief consumer officer; and Giovanni Chiarelli, chief technology and information officer.

The operator is announcing very high-speed mobile technology in several major cities, whose names will be unveiled at the network launch, across the country.

Initially, the mobile operator had planned to launch the technology in early June but the company has experienced problems and delays in introducing some equipment in the country, it was gathered.

Just like Vodacom, its competitor that first deployed 5G in the country, MTN intends to use the emergency spectrum allocated last April by the government to launch its very high-speed telecom services.

The company had obtained a frequency of 40 MHz in the 700/800 MHz band, a frequency of 50 MHz in the 2600 MHz band, and a frequency of 50 MHz in the 3500 MHz band.

MTN’s 5G network will be launched almost two months after Vodacom made the technology available to consumers on 4 May 2020.

The African arm of the UK telecoms group has started its 5G adventure in the three strategic cities of Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Cape Town, announcing planned deployments in other parts of the country.

Earlier, another operator, Rain, launched the country’s first commercial 5G network in partnership with China’s Huawei Technologies in 2019 in Johannesburg and Tshwane, offering subscribers, unlimited data at speeds of up to 700Mbps for 1,000 South African rand per month.

Since launch, Rain has doubled its 5G coverage; a feat it has achieved by adding more sites and providing a new 5G router for users. Currently, it is hoping to expand its 5G coverage to Cape Town and Durban before the end of this year.

In Nigeria however, there appears to be a long way to go for the telecommunications subscribers in the country to have a feel of 5G like their counterparts in South Africa, Nigeria’s closest economic rival in Africa.

Industry experts believe the delay may have negative impacts, explaining that businesses and nations are competing at the speed of thought.

“Why delay what you can start immediately. Why start to play catch up when you can actually lead in the game,” Wale Owoeye, managing director and chief executive officer of Cedarview Communications, queries the Nigerian approach to 5G technology, adding that the delay is not the best.

“However, everything that has positive also has a negative side to it. This means that if you are starting things late, are you making sure that you are taking the lessons and learning from the failures, mistakes and the missteps of those that are going ahead of you? There has to be a balanced view to that,” he said.

He ascribed the delay partly to “lies that got hold of Nigerians saying that 5G is what it is not. So, that has contributed to the delay.”

He further recalled that Nigeria was early with its 5G trials late last year in Lagos, Abuja and Calabar.

With this, experts believed the country was already on the way to actually lead the race; talking of what this does in terms of Nigerian engineers, in terms of skills, and in terms of earning foreign revenue, which enabled Nigerians to get ahead of and even consult for other countries.

“So, I think the time is right for us to look at it again and be decisive. And thankfully, the NCC has started to bring out the policy document, asking for inputs from the public. But the point is this has to be done quickly and we need to know where we are going.

“If we want to play the late starter, are we doing that so that we take the learning to make sure that we do not waste as much time and money that people who have gone ahead would have wasted, trying to do it right?

“There is wisdom in waiting, if it is deliberate. But if we are not conscious about that policy, then, we are missing out on what we should be doing,” he concluded.