In the time when millions of Nigerians are relying on mobile data for work, entertainment, communication, and business, we constantly want to see improvements in this industry – namely, to be able to access the internet at a higher speed. Recently, there have been some important developments in making the 5G technology available in the country, and here is everything you need to know.
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1. What is 5G technology?
5G stands for fifth-generation cellular wireless, a technology that has been standardized at the end of 2017. To this date, 5G is not yet widely available, although many countries in the world have unveiled at least some form of 5G.
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Moreover, this year we have witnessed a range of high-end and mid-range smartphones equipped with 5G technology, which is why tech fans from around the globe are hoping that more and more data providers will make this technology fully possible everywhere.
2. Who is bringing 5G to Nigeria?
The first company to talk about the possibility of unveiling 5G technology in Nigeria was MTN Nigeria. MTN Nigeria first mentioned its plans to make 5G available in the country back in 2018, when the company signed a ₦200 billion loan facility agreement.
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MTN has already had a successful experience of unveiling 5G in Africa – specifically, South Africa, where the implementation project turned out to be a big success. However, there were no talks of a 5G network in West Africa before MTN Nigeria mentioned the possibility, which is one of the reasons why so many people were so excited about the news.
3. The launch of 5G in Nigeria
The project of introducing 5G technology in Nigeria went live on Monday, November 25. The first location for the launch was Abuja, where it was powered by Huawei. MTN Nigeria also revealed plans to test the technology in two more Nigerian cities, Lagos and Calabar, where it will be powered by Ericsson and ZTE respectively.
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According to MTN, the new 5G technology will be more advanced than 4G in many regards, including 100 times the speed, 1000 times the capacity, 10 times the reliability, and 10 times lower latency compared to the previous generation of the technology.
The few tech bloggers and journalists who have already tested the 5G network are simply amazed by the results. One of the downloaded a movie from Netflix on 4G in 1 minute and 40 seconds. With 5G technology, the same movie took just 11 seconds to fully download, which is nothing short of impressive.
In the long run, the 5G technology will become more widely available to Nigerians while also lowering each user’s spending on data thanks to the broadening of the spectrum used by 5G and increasing its capacity. The trial run of 5G in Nigeria will run for 3 months, and during this time, the technology will become available in 4 more Nigerian cities.
4. What if you don’t have 5G yet?
Even though 5G-enabled mobile devices are growing more and more popular, there is clearly still not enough of them to make a real difference. That is why MTN Nigeria also unveiled a CPE, or Customer Premises Equipment initiative.
According to the initiative, every household will be able to take advantage of the benefits of 5G with the help of a WTTx device, which ensures wireless internet access with 5G speed. You will be able to connect any mobile device, even a 2G or 3G one, to it via Wi-Fi and enjoy the perks of 5G technology.
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