We’ve all heard the buzzword 5G as the next big thing in mobile connectivity but up to until now, we haven’t had any actual deployment of the network apart from the usual tests in Africa. Our own MTN Uganda also had a few fests of this next-gen network but commercial deployment remains in the near future.
As of this writing, Vodacom, the South African telecommunication network has deployed its commercial 5G network in selected areas of Pretoria, Johannesburg and Cape Town, making it the first African carrier to do so.
All this comes after it recently received temporary spectrum from South African regulator ICASA for the duration of the national state disaster, which covers the current coronavirus pandemic as well.
The network is said to support both wireless and fixed services and is deployed in the 50Mhz & 3.5GHz band. The telecom has also launched special plans to go with the deployment.
Customers were told to expect speeds between 150Mbps – 500Mbps with a peak speed of 1Gbps. However, all this is dependent on a number of factors like distance from the base station, device type, network traffic among others just like we’ve seen with current 4G networks.
Related: Why is 5G Such a Big Deal Anyway?
Why 5G?
5G has a number of advantages over the current 4G standards in terms of speed, latency and network capacity as you can see below;
- Faster speed – Data transfer speeds are projected to be about 10 times higher with 5G than is possible with 4G. That means significantly faster transmission of images and videos. With 4G/LTE, downloading a high-definition movie might take about 10 minutes. With 5G, it should take less than a second.
- Shorter delays – Though it’s not always noticeable, there is often a brief lag in time from when data is sent to when it’s received. 5G should reduce this so-called latency, making it possible, for example, to watch high-speed virtual reality video with no delays or glitches.
- Increased connectivity – Cell towers equipped with 5G technology would have greatly increased capacity over 4G/LTE. That means more people and more devices should be able to communicate at the same time.
Much as the network is currently live, only a handful of devices can take advantage of it. Keep that in mind.
