FEATURE: 5G
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The era of 5G has arrived in
the MENA region, with 2020
set to be the launchpad for
a ‘more connected’ future.
Femi Oshiga, VP Sales, Service
Providers, MEA, CommScope,
tells Intelligent CIO’s Jess
Phillips why wireless operators
will need to make some critical
decisions during the year ahead,
as well as how CommScope is
helping to support the global
surge of 5G rollouts.
including gaming and Augmented Reality,
which will lead the drive for low latency.
But gaming, Augmented Reality and even
video – which is predicted to be 82% of all
IP traffic by 2020 according to the Cisco
Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Trends,
2017–2022 White Paper – are not the killer
apps that will drive the consumer need for
new experiences and the need for 5G.
Operators will not wait for the killer app and
will be busy in 2020 rolling out, densifying
and powering the network in a variety of
bands while working on driving the standards
and technology.
Choose a band
We’ve heard about the promise
of 5G for years – how it will
be faster and more efficient
– but it wasn’t until 2019 that we saw the
first, small signs of rollout around the world.
In May 2019, Etisalat – the UAE’s largest
telecom operator – became the first service
provider in the region to announce the
availability of a 5G network, supporting
smartphones for commercial use.
It was soon followed by Zain and STC in Saudi
Arabia, the UAE’s second operator du and
Bahraini telco Batelco. The UAE is also the
third most-connected country globally, after
the US and Switzerland, according to the
Carphone Warehouse Global Connectivity
Index. While we wait for additional cities to
come online and 5G devices to be introduced,
we believe 2020 will be the kickoff to a more
connected future.
Consumers in the region will continue to
hear about 5G and the benefits it will offer,
5G continues to pick up speed in the UAE
and beyond, with improving infrastructure
set to boost speed and latency further.
Operators around the world have designated
mid-band (mostly 3.5GHz) as a primary
band for 5G, however the US operators do
not have this option and thus are using both
current lower frequency bands and mmWave
frequencies (above 24 GHz).
According to Emirates Integrated
Telecommunications, the parent company
of UAE’s telco du, UAE consumers can
experience speeds of 10Gbps and above
and will be able to download larger files in
milliseconds in 2020 through 5G.
Operators need efficiency in terms of cost
per bit per area, which dictates how, where
and what bands they are going to deploy. In
other words, operators will decide whether
they use a high band, which then means
the cost per bit goes down but the area
decreases so they need to deploy more cells
– which drives up cost.
Why 2020 will be a year
of critical decisions for
wireless operators
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