The Federal Government has said it is going on with arrangements to deploy Fifth Generation (5G) Technology in the telecommunications industry.
This was disclosed by the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof Umar Garba Danbatta, at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between NCC and the Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited (NigComSat) at the headquarters of the Commission in Abuja.
The MoU between the two agencies under the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy would lay the foundations for the acquisition of Frequency Spectrum suitable for the deployment of the technology in the country.
Danbatta said the NigComSat, it was discovered after investigation across the globe, had the appropriate technology to facilitate the deployment.
He said, “Among the Frequency Spectrum bands allocated to 5G by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the C-band (3.4GHz – 3.9GHz) stands out because its balancing point between coverage and capacity provides the perfect environment for 5G connectivity.
“The C-band is most suitable and appropriate for immediate deployment of 5G services taking into consideration availability of device ecosystem with 60-70 per cent of global commercial 5G network deployment currently in the band, thus the importance of this Spectrum for early deployment of 5G services in Nigeria cannot be overemphasized.
“For optimal 5G service performance, an average of contiguous 100 MHz of spectrum in the C-band is required by an operator. However, in Nigeria, only 120 MHz of the band (3.4 – 3.52) GHz is available for mobile services while the remaining 680 MHz (3.52 – 4.2) GHz of the band is used by NigComSat (NG-1R) satellites.
“The Commission initiated a negotiation with NIGCOMSAT whom, in our estimate, could make some adjustment to its satellite operation and release part of its spectrum holding in the band to facilitate the deployment of 5G in Nigeria.
“The two agencies have been in discussions on how to relocate the operations of NG-1R to the standard C-band 300MHz (3.9GHz – 4.2GHz) potion of the band, which is more suitable in terms of Satellite service offering because the end-user terminal is cheaper there while leaving the non-standard C-band 400MHz (3.5GHz – 3.9GHz) portion of the band for 5G use.
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