5G is Gradually taking over the Nigerian Digital Space

Nigeria’s deployment of Fifth Generation (5G) Network is to position Nigeria in the fourth industrial revolution as a thorough participant. 5G network deployments shall strengthen Nigeria’s digital space in the areas of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Internet of Things. According IHS, long term economic growth of 5G on global economy shall be $13Trillion and the value chain would spread across all industries.

5G enabled job growth on the global economy is expected to be greater than the other Generation Networks. The benefit and impact of 5G on global economy would be good for business, and Internet accessibility shall be faster which would greatly affect the Nigerian and Africa’s economy positively.

The 5G Network would affect the post-pandemic economy effectively; it shall increase the speed of the network component of an application and increases communication between servers.

Nigeria became the first West-Africa country to deploy the Network in 2019 when MTN the largest telecoms provider conducted a spectrum test in her two offices across two locations in Lagos and Calabar, the technical partners in conducting the test were Huawei, ZTE, and Ericsson.

The deployment and the announcement by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isah Pantanmi that 5G network shall commence in the Nigeria digital space January 2022 is a laudable development.

The 5G network hopes to change the digital dynamics of Mobile technology and flexibility to the fixed and broadcast networks. It shall also stabilize data demand by users due to its speed and innovative advancement. The benefit of 5G network is essential to businesses to increase their bottom-line, the high data speed, flexibility, ultra-low latency, reliability, increase in network capacity, better internet availability and shall be greatly beneficial to user experience. The 5G network is 10 times faster than 4G; the creativity it would bring to visual files in digital space would be unimaginable. Downloads shall be done in matter of milliseconds and seconds.

5G operates at frequencies of about 28GHz and 39GHz which is faster than 4G which uses about 700MHz-2500MHz frequency to transfer information. 5G Ultra Wide broadband supports 1 million devices per square kilometer. The flexibility of this network affords backward compatibility with 4G on multiple spectrum bands.

The network uses 28GHz and 39GHz mmWave spectrum band, this creative innovation would increase network speed and capacity, higher number of devices shall be able to function on that higher frequency spectrum. 5G operating in mmWave shall increase users experience and also increase new use like industrial automation, Internet of Things, more Smart Cities shall be connected across the globe. It would optimize the fourth industrial revolution to its full potentials.

The deployment of 5G across cities brought its own complain and skepticism. Top on the agenda were security reasons and its relationship to Covid-19 pandemic, the unfounded theories relating to the deployment has been debunked by WHO and relevant UN agencies.

African continent has been dragging in the deployment of the network due to the investments and costly infrastructural deployment attached to it. According  to Ericsson Mobility Report on 5G about Sub-Saharan Africa. The report highlighted statistics from Sub-Saharan African markets that around 15% mobile subscriptions for 4G were possible at the end of 2020. 4G Mobile subscription is forecasted to increase to 76% by 2026.

The 5G volume Mobile subscription are likely to reach 70million subscribers by 2026. The cost implication is huge Nigeria is to start auctioning spectrum for 5G network in fourth quarter of 2021 according to NCC’s projections.

The NCC affirmed that the auction slot shall cost service providers N75Billion. The price tag on the slot shows few of the service providers would be able to afford this investment. The stance of NCC could decline more Nigerians to access this innovative technology. The private sector is still the saving grace like what happened with the GSM miracles. In the next 2 decades 5G would have covered more cities in Nigeria and Africa. 5G technology is the future of innovation in the digital space.