In Kenya, we have experienced 4G services that were launched by Safaricom back in December 2014. In a tweet posted on 13th January, this year, seems like Safaricom is actively testing 5G.
Yall ain't ready. .. pic.twitter.com/ALYNDNIMLA
— Alex (@Qanyizi) January 13, 2020
However, Vodacom has signed a roaming agreement with Liquid Telecom to launch 5G services in South Africa. Vodacom is banking on Liquid’s 3.5 GHz spectrum required for 5G, to enable it offer the services to its subscribers. This development makes Vodacom the first mobile operator in South Africa to offer 5G to mobile users.
In September last year, Rain, a data services company, partnered with Huawei to launch 5G services in the country, covering Johannesburg and Tshwane.
Vodacom Group Limited is a South African mobile communications company, providing voice, messaging, data and converged services to its subscribers. It has operations in Tanzania, DRC, Mozambique, and Lesotho. Additionally, it provides business services to customers in over 32 African countries, including Nigeria, Zambia, Angola, Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, and Cameroon.
In 2018, Vodacom Group created the first standards-based commercial 5G service in Africa using the 3.5GHz spectrum in Lesotho. The fixed-wireless broadband service offers speeds of over 700Mbps and latencies of below 10 milliseconds.
“Until such time as 3.5GHz spectrum becomes available to Vodacom South Africa, this network will not be available to its customers. Vodacom Lesotho has been assigned spectrum in the 3.5GHz band, enabling the launch of a commercial 5G service. Vodacom South Africa has been granted a temporary spectrum license of 100MHz in the 3.5GHz band to showcase the same 5G network capabilities.”
