Airtel Uganda customers with 5G compatible devices will now be able to enjoy the 5G experience after regulator, Uganda Communications Commission cleared the telecom company to roll out the spectrum in the country.
The telecom giant indicated in February that all their 100% 4G network then, was 5G ready and had applied for the required spectrum to start rolling out this revolutionary technology.
To this, Airtel indicated that tests had been successful at 11 sites in Kampala for the 5th generation mobile network that enables a new kind of network that is designed to connect virtually everyone and everything together including machines, objects, and devices at very high speeds.
Speaking on Thursday, Airtel Uganda Managing Director, Manoj Murali said the wait is now over with the green light from UCC.
“I am privileged to announce that the wait for 5G is over. We have got the required spectrum and shall be begin deployment next week. We were able to transform the way people, businesses and communities connect and do business using 4G and are grateful to our partners for the support on that journey. 5G will revolutionise the way people, businesses and industry connect and improve their productivity because of the super-fast internet speeds. We are deeply honoured to be delivering yet another Airtel first,”Murali said.
Unlike others, 5G delivers higher multi-Gbps peak data speeds, more reliability, massive network capacity, increased availability, and a more uniform user experience to more users.
5G can support up to 1 million connected devices per square kilometre compared to 4G which can only support up to 100,000 connected devices in a similar area which makes 5G the suitable network over which remote teams can collaborate to undertake tasks like surgery, shared online school classes, farmers can share live video farming tips, engineering tasks over video and stream gaming and other entertainment experiences.
According to Murali, Airtel will deploy 5G in 50 sites in the course of next week beginning with areas such as; parliament avenue, Fairway area, Speak Apartment, crested towers among others.
“We shall continue to update the country via social media with 5G covered areas in Kampala as we roll out this revolutionary service across the country. We strongly believe that by the end of the year we will have covered many more sites especially in the cities. We will have transformed the way people, communities and businesses experience high speed broadband internet. 5G has a good potential to transform services like e-learning, telemedicine, manufacturing and commercial agriculture,” Murali said.
He noted that customers with 5G phones ought select 5G network option on their phones whereas existing Airtel 4G SIM or E-SIMs will work on 5G network with no need for any upgrade.