Scope for 5G utilisation exists in Zim, ITU

Walter Muchinguri in Victoria Falls
Zimbabwe has great infrastructure that could benefit immensely from the adoption of new technologies such as 5G whose commercial roll out was imminent, ITU Telecommunication Standardisation Bureau director Dr Chaesub Lee.

5G or fifth generation is the latest generation of cellular mobile communications.

He said while addressing journalists here yesterday ahead of the official opening of a high level meeting of experts of the International Telecommunication Union-T Study 13 today that is focusing on new technologies for the future specifically 5G.

Zimbabwe is the second African country to host the meeting after Uganda in 2012. It is usually held in Geneva, Switzerland.

The meeting, which started on Monday last week and ends on Friday and is being jointly hosted by the ITU and the Postal and Regulatory Authority, will be officially opened by the Information Communication Technology and Courier Services Minister Kazembe Kazembe.

Dr Lee, who had an opportunity to visit the Victoria Falls yesterday and was charmed by them, said that tourism was one of the sectors that could greatly benefit from 5G.

He said while 5G may appear to be more advance for many countries especially developing nations like Zimbabwe there was scope for these countries to utilise 5G and it could debut in Africa soon.

“Sure why not, it could happen during the course of this year, I believe your country has very good infrastructure and it utilises many devices to support its infrastructure, like this nice rainforest and if you can utilise 5G to promote it, it will be very helpful,” he said.

He said while most African countries were still to implement 4G, following 5G was now a general trend that could not be ignored.

Africa, which has a lot of early adapters, he said stands to benefit from the new technology which provides integrated mobile access that makes it more relevant than 4G.

He said the holding of the conference for the second time in Africa ever represents their appreciation of growing contribution being made by African nations and other regions to the ITU.

He said African nations have their unique problems which they were willing to look into and the meeting presented a great opportunity to do this.

Turning to the meeting he said, “Our programme in Zimbabwe is network for future, network 2030 looking at the 5G to support fixed network, cloud and quantum based communications networks,” he said.

He said the roll out of the commercial service of 5G should start by mid-year as countries such as South Korea, the United States and China have been holding pilot projects for 5G.

“5G will start at the middle of this year in several countries and at the end of this year or beginning of next year we will see many other countries including Europeans they will have commercial services as you know several companies Samsung and Huawei have already announced 5G mobile phones.

He said 5G boasts of many features the present one being huge bandwidth with other features expected to be added on next year.

Speaking at the same occasion the secretary for Information Communication Technology and Courier Services Sam Kundishora said they were very happy to be hosting the high profile meeting when there is a lot of interest in 5 G in the country and the rest of the world.

“Dr Lee spoke of 5G and I can tell you that even our operators itching to take part in 5G experiments to lay the foundation for its adoption in this country so we are very happy and even our techies’ participation in the meeting has been commendable,” he said.

He said the meeting was coming at a time when Zimbabwe has made great strides in upgrading it telecommunication infrastructure.

“Our infrastructure is very good I think you have heard from Dr Lee applauding our infrastructure and even at this conference all the delegates who are coming from developed countries have commended us for our infrastructure.

“I think you will agree with me that there are very few pockets in the country where you may not have access, the quality of access might be the question but not the availability,” he said.

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