5G Adoption in Africa
5G Rollout in Kenya Escalates as Airtel Upgrades 600 Sites
Sourced from Comms MEA Airtel Kenya has upgraded over 600 sites in Nairobi, Mombasa and Malindi to ensure that they are 5G ready – this comes shortly after rival telco, Safaricom, launched the first 5G commercial services in East Africa. “These 600 sites are now 5G-ready. We don’t have to make any further modifications to the network. We will just get the spectrum and decide when to switch on,” says Prasanta Das Sarma, MD of Airtel Kenya. According to Business Daily, the new 5G network will “give consumers Internet speeds of 700 megabits per second, more than three times faster than the current 4G network, allowing operators to offer an alternative service for homes and offices in areas which are not currently covered by its fibre network”. Sarma also revealed that subscribers can hope to ...
Why South Africa Needs Fibre to Drive 5G Connectivity
5G is paving the way forward for the connectivity that digital technologies increasingly require, but it offers a lot more than just unprecedented mobile data connection speeds. 5G is capable of handling many more connected devices, has ten times lower latency than 4G, and enables ‘network slicing’ which can prioritise specific users, services, or devices during times of network overload. With all these benefits, it’s no surprise that many people have the misconception that 5G will ultimately replace fibre, when in fact 5G without fibre would not exist. The 5G mobile network is currently being rolled out in South Africa and will still take a few years to become widely available. Even then, 5G networks will not eventually replace fibre optic networks but rather complement them by offering m...
