Originally published at: https://www.mobilitaria.com/5g-network-in-nigeria-possible-soon-ncc/
Last year 2018, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said Nigeria would be ready to roll out 5G networks with the 26GHz, 38GHz and 42GHz spectrum bands by 2020. The Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, said this in Abuja Thursday during a collaborative meeting with GSMA for 5G rollout in Nigeria. Danbatta acknowledged the deficit in infrastructure rollout and spectrum availability in the country but added that the NCC was already working to address the challenges.
Fast forward 2019, the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has said Nigeria was ready for 5G network. Executive Director of the commission, Prof. Umar Dambatta, who disclosed this at an interactive session with journalists in Abuja earlier this month, said with the enlisting of leading mobile operator into the Stock Exchange, other operators, including Bharti Airtel, Globacom and 9mobile were getting set to join the fray.
He said NCC, apart from holding a stakeholders’ forum to come up with a roadmap on 5G in Nigeria, the commission had opened consultations on spectrum for drones and was proactively leading discussions on the deployment of new technologies.
He said: “NCC did not just sit back. Apart from constantly engaging with state governors through NEC of Nigeria Governors Forum, we have also stepped in directly by licensing InfraCos to provide fibre bandwidth on an open access bases. We are providing them subsidy to mitigate their costs.
“We expect this to start bearing fruit shortly, but the major thing is the support of the state governors. That is critical. Nigeria is a federation of 36 states; we cannot dictate what to charge for RoW to them, we can only persuade them and hope they see the superior merit and long-term benefits of making their states receptive to telecoms infrastructure.”
Rollout of 5G network in Nigeria would be a game changer to improve network connection dramatically and deal with disruptions when sharing videos from crowded places. The speed of 5G is like hundred times of what we are getting currently from 3G and 4G in Nigeria and that it would allow lot of new applications, and even speed up some of the existing applications that use videos.