By Christoph Fitih

The African telecom service providers are not leaving any stone unturned to catch the 5G bandwagon. They have been, in fact, on the forefront of all the efforts made for the global rollout of 5G services.

Some service providers on the continent have already initiated trials and pilots of the 5G technology. While Vodacom recently launched Africa’s first commercial 5G network in Lesotho, a tiny country landlocked in the Southern Africa, others like MTN and Rain have also started 5G trials. Rain recently announced that it would be launching commercial 5G services soon.

The buzz in the African market around 5G is not without a reason. The excitement that the telecom operators in the region are showing is backed by the ‘revolutionizing’ potential behind 5G. Owing to its features like ultra-high internet speed, extremely low latency and 1000 times better bandwidth and ubiquitous coverage, 5G presents an excellent opportunity for the service providers to tackle the issue of difficult terrain and lack of infrastructure in the region.

Besides, 5G services would enable governments in the continent to take essential services like education, health, and security to the remotest areas through digital platforms. The technology allows service providers to offer many innovative use cases like remote surgery, autonomous driving and augmented reality.

The leap of faith

The action around 5G on the continent is nothing less than a leap of faith. Going beyond the glamourous use cases of 5G, there are other use cases of the technology which are extremely relevant for a growing and developing region like Africa.

At the same time, there is no running away from the fact that Africa continues to be struggling with providing basic connectivity to the people. Mobile penetration in Africa stands at meagerly 44%, while internet penetration is at a lowly 25-30% against the global average of 43%. And here is a dose of reality check – even as we talk about 5G in Africa, 60% of users on the continent are still on the primary 2G network, and by 2025 as many as 62% users are likely to be on 3G, 30% on 4G and only a tiny section of the users, 3%, are likely to be on 5G network.

These are anything but encouraging estimates for service providers bullish on 5G services in the region. However, 5G can help the administration and the service providers in addressing the digital divide, which in turn will bring down poverty and provide more opportunities for growth to the people.

A different approach

5G needs a whole new plan in terms of network architecture and the way communication networks are operated and managed today. For example, for the 5G network to achieve low latency of less than one millisecond, deep and better coverage, the service providers need to provide for network densification. This is accomplished through adding more cell sites, macro sites and deploying small cells to increase capacity and bandwidth of the network.

Again the service providers would need to leverage the concept of network slicing to live up to the potential of connecting millions of devices and providing customized services to each set of customers within the same network. Slicing, as the name suggests, means dividing the network into different slices with each part working standalone virtualised unit. This allows the service providers to offer fit-to-order services to a different set of customers within the same network without incurring additional cost.

Virtualization: The real solution

Service providers in Africa need to adopt virtualisation technology to tie all the loose ends, and successfully roll-out 5G in phases.

Virtualization is nothing but shifting the network from a hardware driven system to a software-driven system. A software-based network has many advantages – less use of heavy hardware, low consumption of energy and space, lower cost of setting up networks and a much more flexible network.

This addresses two issues that the service providers in the region face. One, by virtualizing their networks, they can not only save cost in maintaining existing networks, but the cost of expansion to unconnected regions also comes down drastically.

This ensures that while they can expand their 2G and 3G networks to new areas, they can also at the same time afford to spend on 5G trials and infrastructure building. Virtual networks also support the deployment of higher generation technologies like 4G and 5G on existing 2G/3G networks.

The 5G technology has a lot of potential for taking essential amenities like education and healthcare, among others, to remote areas of Africa at a very minimal cost. However, 5G is a fledgling technology that still needs a lot filling of gaps and adjustments in the existing networks. Adopting the concept of virtualization for expansion allows the service providers to bring down the cost of deploying networks in newer areas and at the same time prepare the networks for early adoption of 5G technology.

Christoph Fitih, is Director Sales – Africa, Parallel Wireless