MTN Nigeria and Airtel Nigeria will be gearing up to deploy the Fifth Generation, 5G network in Nigeria by January 2022.
This was disclosed by the Executive Vice Chairman of Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, Prof. Umar Dambatta at a Nigeria e-Government Summit in Lagos.
Pro Danbatta revealed that the commission had granted Airtel the right to demonstrate its own 5G services, to determine how efficient it can be.
“Recently we granted approval to the Proof-of-Concept (PoC) and Non-Commercial 5G trials in the 3.5 and 26GHz bands to MTN Communications PLC, and now we are in the process of another non commercial trial with Airtel,” he stated.
Prof Danbatta also stated that only MTN and Airtel have completed acquiring spectrum bands for their 5G deployment.
“Two Spectrum bands trading, the transfer of 2 x 10MHz in the 900MHz Extended GSM Band from Intercellular to Airtel, and 2 x 10MHz in the 800MHz band from Intercellular to MTN, have been successfully traded” he said.
Sources say that deployment of the 5G network will commence in January 2022.
Source: Vanguard
