Ethio Telecom Launches its Pre-Commercial 5G Service
Ethio telecom has been a pioneer telecom service provider in Africa. They have been introducing latest technologies to support socio economic development of Ethiopia from the establishment to date, playing enabling role in the overall development of the nation in all-weathers.
As part of its commitment to realize the government’s digital transformation agenda, they have been expanding our 3G and 4G networks throughout the nation effectively achieving 97% telecom services coverage, densifying the network and upgrading the earlier technologies to the latest ones. In addition to the network expansion, they have introduced variety of products and services including digital services. They have also broadened our service horizon by introducing our mobile financial service, telebirr.
“Continuing our effort in enhancing and modernizing our telecom services, today we are pleased to announce the launching of our pre- commercial 5G services in Addis Ababa in six mobile stations.”
Statement by Ethio Telecom
The fifth generation network (5G) characterized by the fastest speed (up to10 Gbs), low latency (less than 1 ms) and massive communication capability (up to 1 Million connections within 1 km2), can unlock blazing fast speeds in more places, real-time responses and massive connectivity. With such high speeds, superior reliability and negligible latency, 5G will impact industries such as mission critical services requiring real time decisions, Manufacturing plants, remote Health care, precision Agriculture, self-driving vehicles, IoT, real-time operations making them all a reality.
“As part of the pre-commercial trial service, we have begun our service in the Capital and will expand our footprint to regional cities up to 150 sites over the coming 12 months. We shall further roll out 5G sites to more areas based on feasible business demands.
However, our full commercialization of the service is dependent on the readiness and demand from the players in the ecosystem: customers’ readiness to use the service, availability of 5G enabled devices and Smartphones, the need and readiness of enterprises to use the service.
Our pre-commercial deployment of the 5G service in Addis Ababa, as the capital city of our country and the diplomatic seat of international and continental institutions is in line with our aspiration to become a preferred operator as well as with our 3 years’ growth strategy and technology roadmap. The Ethiopian Communication Authority has furnished us with temporary 5G Spectrum approval to implement the pre-commercial trial of the service while our Strategic Partner Huawei technologies has deployed the 5G network.
This 5G service will provide our customers with best-in-class solutions, improve their experience and allow our enterprise customers to boost productivity, enhance operational efficiency, and introduce new solutions to their customers.”
Statement by Ethio Telecom