Nigerian Telecommunication: 5G Attainment,
Prospects and Challenges II
Apology to the readers of my Column as the
continuation of this piece was unavoidably missing last week due exigency of my
official engagements. Now back to the topic, Nigerian three months trial of 5G,
fifth generation technology in 3 selected towns; Abuja, Calabar and Lagos from
October to December, 2019 simultaneously.
As reported in the first part of the article, the deployment of 5G is
very critical to the nation economy, because of so many advantages of 5G
majorly due to latency and speed of the 5G Internet service compared 4G
networks. Comparison of 5G and 4G networks were made during the live
demonstration of the two networks while formally launching of the three months
trial in Nigeria. 5G took just 15.78 seconds to download a 2.3 GB video on the
5G networks while it took 4G networks exactly 5 minutes, 3.84 seconds to
download the same file. This means 5G networks took approximately 5.2 % of the
time taken by 4G networks to download the same file using the same device.
As clearly articulated in in this column
two weeks ago; there is no doubt, use of 5G networks in Nigeria has tremendous
potential to triple the country’s effort in economic emancipation, poverty
eradication and transformation into secured, agrarian and prosperous nation.
With 5G networks, the security challenges of banditry, kidnapping and insurgency
can squarely be addressed as perpetrators can precisely be located in real-time
and be dealt with according to the law. This is because the criminals largely
depend on the use of communication to commit havoc and disappear. Use of
improved technologies in agricultural sector, industry, transportation,
logistics, are other areas that 5G networks technology become handy and
effective. Can Nigeria make the required investment to make 5G networks operate?
This was the question posed and needing an
honest answer. Nigeria has all the natural resources and wherewithal to invest
and make 5G networks fully operational for the benefits of Nigeria and in deed
West African sub region. However, many things need to be put in place. The
first is addressing the power sector and make it meet the national power requirements
for domestics and industrial uses. Over several years, the power sector has
failed Nigerians and cannot provide adequate electricity supply to domestic
households and industrial producers despite the country’s endowment with the
largest deposits of coal, oil and gas in Africa. On the average, only 40% of
Nigeria's population is connected to the energy grid or enjoy power supply of
not more than four hours a day. In several energy grids connected areas some days
can go by without any power at all without any official explanation of the
power outage and with absolutely no apology to the consumers. Mildly put, power
sector in Nigeria is moribund and cannot supply more than 5,000 MW over 24hrs to
the population of over 200 million people. This is in spite of having over 12,500
MW Electricity Generating Plants capacity across the nation. Nigerians have
massively lost confidence in power sector because of its high level of
unreliability. This is why Nigeria becomes the largest consumer of electric
generators in the World. The GSM service providers are using millions of GSM
towers littered in all nooks and crannies of Nigeria and absolutely powered
with electric generators 24/7. Many of us become sad when we visit other
African countries and find such countries enjoying stable power supply and then
ask, when are going to overcome the issue of energy crisis in Nigeria? Fundamentally,
5G Networks require efficient and reliable supply of quality electric energy at
all times. Well, power supply in many countries is taken for granted and thus,
not being a considered issue of consideration in the requirements of 5G
Networks.
5G networks have high connection density and
can provide up to a million connections per square kilometre compared with 4G,
which has a typical connection density of not more than 2,000 connections per
square kilometre. With the increase in popularity of Internet of Things (IoT)
applications such as Smart Wearable Technology, Smart Home Technology, Smart
Cities, Smart Grids and the rest, the high connection density of 5G is a vital
capability that will enable Mass-Machine Time Communication (M-MTC) use cases
and satisfy the demands of a digital society.
Thus, to successfully operate 5G, there
must be facilities to transform Core Network Functions of the current 4G
networks into Virtualized Network Functions, whereby service applications are
deployed in Data Centers on cloud-based platforms and the Cloudification of
application programs. This means that the IT infrastructure for 5G must be up
scaled from multi-cloud to hybrid cloud to store and generate data as well as optimize
the infrastructure performance through automation. These requirements entail
capacity building of the technical operators as well as investment for
acquiring both soft hard ware facilities for the 5G-network technology. Consequently,
the 5G network service providers need the right tools, processes and skills to
architect, migrate and manage that houses business application of the network
Globally, partnership between public and private
sectors champion the deployment of 5G-network technology because of the
business orientation and outputs of the network. Many initiatives on 5G are
currently ongoing. According to the online publication of Journal of Telecommunications System & Management, in USA, the
three main activities carried out on 5G are: Intel Strategic Research Alliance
(ISRA), 4G Americas and NYU Wireless Research Center. In China, it is the 863
Research Program and IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group. In Japan, the 2020 and
Beyond Ad-Hoc Group is under the ARIB’s advance wireless communications study
committee. In Korea, the main activity is the 5G Forum. The most important initiatives
in EU are the 5G Private Public Partnership (5G PPP) and the 5G Innovation
Centre (5G IC), at the University of Surrey, in UK.
Some of the most attractions of the 5G
networks are the Area traffic capacity of minimum of 10 Megabits per second per
square meter for downlink, which can go as high as 20 Gigabits per second
(Gbps) with connection density of one million devices per square
kilometer. These attractions make 5G the
most indispensable tool to the entire business world, technocrats, academia, security
and all those interested in the advancement of humanity.
Universally, the private sector is the main
driver of 5G technology being a veritable venture for exponential profit
making. However, government has regulatory functions as well as provision of
infrastructural support to the technology operators. The biggest beneficiary of
5G technology is government in form of economic development and jobs creation
to the nation. In Nigeria, we are still
battling to overcome the rudimental issues of development such as water,
electricity, roads etc, which are being taken for granted in even less
developed nations like Nigeria. In spite of these challenges, Nigeria can do
much more to facilitate the deployment of ICT. One critical area needing
support is use of satellite for Internet Services in the country. Less than
forty percent of Nigerians have access and affordability of quality Internet
services in whichever level such as 2G, 3G or 4G. Nigeria launched two
communication satellites between 2007 and 2011.
Nigerian Communication Satellite (NigComSat-1)
was second Nigerian satellite and the third African geosynchronous
communication satellite, when it was launched at 16:01 UTC on 13 May 2007,
aboard a Chinese Long March 3B carrier rocket, from the Xichang Satellite
Launch Centre in China. Nigerian Communications Satellite Ltd (NIGCOMSAT)
operated the spacecraft. Its design was to provide coverage to many parts of
Africa on C-band and Ku-band, a global navigation beam on L-band and the
Ka-band transponders with spot beams over Nigeria, South Africa and Europe. On
November 11, 2008, NigComSat-1 failed in orbit after running out of power due
to an anomaly in its solar array. The failure of NigComSat-1 resulted into the
launching of a new Nigerian communications satellite, NigeComSat-1R into orbit
by China in Xichang. This satellite was supposedly paid for by the insurance
policy on NigComSat-1, which was de-orbited in 2009. The satellite was aimed at
positively impacting on national development in various key sectors of
communications, Internet services, Health, Agriculture, Environmental
protection and national security. Is the satellite serving Nigeria and Africa
in these areas? How effective are these services? What roles can NigComSat-1R
make in the deployment of 5G in Nigeria? To be concluded next week.
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