Dr Isa Pantami, Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, has revealed that the Five Generation (5G) network will be available in Nigeria by January 2022 in a bid to monitor public assets against vandalism.
Mr Ubale Maska, the Commissioner for Technical Services, who represented the Minister disclosed this information at a Town Hall Meeting that was organized by the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture. The purpose of the meeting was to address vandalism of power and telecommunications infrastructure.
5G is the 5th generation mobile network, a successor to 1G, 2G, 3G and 4G networks. This global wireless technology is meant to deliver higher data speeds, more reliability, massive network capacity and increased availability.
This long-awaited news is coming on the heels of a deployment approval of the 5G network by the Federal Government. The rollout of the network will make management of the 50,000 telecommunications sites nationwide easy.
According to the Minister, the 16,000 mobile network outages between January to July 2021, across operators like MTN, Globacom, Airtel and 9Mobile were caused by fiber cuts, access denial and theft. He added that the protection of telecommunications facilities was important to the nation’s overall welfare.
Prior to this announcement, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has already signed an MoU with the Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited for the use of the C-Band Spectrum to boost 5G services in Nigeria.
Early this year, Nigerians expressed concerns about the 5G networks with claims that it was the cause of the coronavirus pandemic and also religious concerns about it being the antichrist.
The Senate then asked the Federal Government to suspend plans to deploy the 5G network pending a 6-month investigation into possible health risks associated with the technology.
Now that all is clear, Nigeria will be joining the list of African countries like South Africa and Lesotho that are already enjoying the benefits of the 5G network. Globally, it has already been adopted by several countries like the United Kingdom and the United States.