MTN 5G commercial services begins in Lagos

By Chinenye Anuforo

MTN Nigeria has launched the fifth generation network (5G) in Lagos with a promise to kick off national launch in Abuja soon.

Speaking to stakeholders during the commercial launch at its headquarters, the CEO, Mr. Karl Toriola, said the company has switched on 5G network in six geo-political zones with about 223 sites, which are being accelerated very fast.

He said, “We started with approximately 223 sites, but we actually think that we are going to move extremely fast. So, you are going to see rapid expansion of 5G coverage across the country  in the coming months and years.”

He promised that the same vigour MTN gave in deploying services in second, third and fourth generation networks is what will be applied in the 5G technology to make it massively accessible to majority of users particularly in major urban cities in the coming weeks and months.

Fielding questions from journalists, Toriola explained that the launch of 5G will not stop the roll out of 4G network. He said 4G remains on the data side and still the company’s bread and butter and investments, deployments for both networks would be done simultaneously. 

“4G will continue to take a tremendous amount of our efforts. So as we speak, we are accelerating 4G at a very fast pace, and there is no taking our eyes off the 4G because sincerely it is still quite a small quantity of handsets that are 5G capable, and until it becomes ubiquitously available across the country, most of our customers are going to be using 4g, and we want to continue to lead in 4G.”

He lamented the challenges of getting the foreign exchange to important necessary facilities to help fast deployment of networks including 5G but said as a Nigerian company, staying put to surmount the challenges is part of the prices to pay to get the country back on the right economic stead.