Mr Mohammed Rufia, the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of MTN Nigeria, recently indicated that the telecom group continues to spearhead its efforts to bring 5G to more communities.
Commenting on MTN’s progress, Rufia said, “As you are aware, we participated in the auction of the 5G spectrum, and MTN Nigeria is one of the winners who got the 100 megahertz or 3.5 gigahertz spectrum. Following the approval of the NCC, we have rolled out initially, starting with about seven cities, but now we are in 13 cities and over 700 sites in Nigeria. We had the launch event in Lagos, where we demonstrated the use cases. What 5G can be used for and what it can do, we have gone ahead and rolled out in several parts of the country, and that rollout is continuing. So, right now, we are in 13 cities and are still expanding. Nigerians are already enjoying the benefits of 5G.”
Looking at the importance of 5G, he said, “The first and most important thing to have when rolling out 5G is the spectrum, and we have the spectrum. We also have the preceding technology, 4G, and the sites and fibre infrastructure required for connectivity. So with all that, we were ready to roll out 5G from a technology point of view. We also have the capacity, the core network, and the features to be able to deploy. We have the technical know-how and subscribers that have the devices to be able to use 5G. So, we were ready. Nigeria was prepared for 5G. We have all the things that we need. As with all of our technologies, we deploy them in phases. So, we start in a few cities, then expand, and subscribers will also adopt and get the devices over time and adopt the technology. So, Nigeria was ready when we launched the network and is progressing. We are going to be seeing more and more adoption in the future.
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