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Vodacom says it has activated what it claims to be Africa’s first live 5G mobile network in three cities: Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town, with more deployments planned in other parts of the country.
This network, said in a statement on Monday (April 4), will support both fixed and mobile wireless services and is currently available at twenty live 5G sites, 18 of which are in Gauteng and 2 in Cape Town.
Vodacom noted that ICASA recently assigned it time spectrum during the state of national disaster, including 50 MHz in the 3.5 GHz band, which it said has been used to accelerate its 5G launch.
Vodacom and Liquid Telecom also entered into managed network services and national roaming agreements for a national 5G network in December 2019.
The 5G rollout will help Vodacom manage the 40% increase in mobile network traffic and the 250% increase in fixed traffic experienced during the Covid-19 crash, he said.
Customers can check if they are in a 5G coverage area on the Vodacom website. They can then sign up for a new 5G device deal or upgrade online.
The new 5G device will be delivered to the customer’s home during the national closing period. For those looking to use Vodacom’s new 5G network, it currently supports LG V50 5G smartphone and Huawei 5G CPE PRO router
It’s official, we’ve activated Africa’s first live 5G network, which supports fixed and mobile wireless services. Read more here: https://t.co/oob3ae07C5 pic.twitter.com/5IIwqJUt2M
– Vodacom (@Vodacom) May 4, 2020
5G improves significantly over 4G in three key areas:
1. Faster speeds
Compared to 4G, top speeds in 5G will increase significantly. 5G will allow fiber-like speeds using the mobile network. This will be extremely useful for downloading multimedia content like 4K and even 8K movies in seconds.
Higher 5G speeds will also enable entirely new applications in the future, such as Augmented and Virtual Reality (VR), which will come in handy for making new applications like e-education and also new forms of entertainment like watching a sports game or concert. of live music. VR from home.
2. Low latency and better reliability
Latency is the time it takes for devices to send and receive signals to each other. Latency is very important for applications that require near real-time responses, for example between the user’s device and a cloud server used in games.
Compared to 4G, where latencies are typically between 20-30 milliseconds, 5G can support latencies as low as 1 millisecond.
3. More capacity
5G networks can also provide much more data capacity. 5G uses spectrum much more efficiently than 4G technology and can fit more data on the same amount of spectrum.
5G devices can connect many more “things” to the network at the same time, allowing new applications like smart homes and smart cities to be made. 5G is also more efficient than 4G in terms of the energy required per data bit that is transmitted or received.
Read: Vodacom reports a spike in massive data traffic on its network
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