Ethio telecom announced it has launched pre-commercial 5G services in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at six mobile stations. The 5G network provides a speed of up to 10 Gbs, a latency of less than 1 ms, and a massive communication capability of up to a million connections in a square kilometer.

Ethio telecom stated the full commercialization of the service depends "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."

The deployment of the 5G service in Addis Ababa is in line with its aspiration to become a preferred operator as well as with the company's 3-years growth strategy and technology roadmap, Ethio telecom related in a statement. The high speed of the fifth-generation (5G network), along with its superior reliability and negligible latency, will impact industries such as mission-critical services requiring real-time decisions, manufacturing plants, remote health care, precision agriculture, self-driving vehicles, IoT, and real-time operations, making them all a reality, Ethio telecom predicted.

The Ethiopian Communication Authority has furnished Ethio telecom with temporary 5G Spectrum approval to implement the pre-commercial trial of the service while Huawei Technologies, Ethio telecom's strategic partner, deployed the 5G network.

Ethio telecom recalled it has been expanding 3G and 4G networks throughout the country, effectively achieving 97 percent telecom services coverage, densifying the network, and upgrading the earlier technologies to the latest ones. In addition to the network expansion, Ethio telecom has introduced a variety of products and services including digital services, a mobile financial service dubbed telebirr, as well as a loyalty program named Ashamtele, and an online sales channel telegebeya.

Source (Including Image): Ethio telecom