There is an uncontrollable hysteria across the global telecoms community as the world gears up for the arrival of super-fast 5th Generation (5G) networks.
5G is latest next generation network with fierce speeds of up to 20 Gigabits-per-second (20Gbps), surpassing by far its predecessors 4G, 3G and 2G.
Zimbabwe holds an equally lucrative telecommunications sector in Africa with a gross telecoms revenue of $1.115 Billion recorded in the last quarter of 2017 as reflected in the recent sector performance report released by the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ).
Speaking to the POTRAZ Director General, Dr Gift Machengete a week ago, he commented that Zimbabwe is on course to intercept the latest 5G technology as the country also gears for the total Internet of Things (IoT) which is taking over world economies across the globe.
During his presentation of the POTRAZ 2017 4th Quarter Sector Perfomance Report, Dr. Machengete said Potraz has been making detailed researches on how Zimbabwe can leapfrog from the current 3G/4G technologies to 5G which is the future of all networks.
Dr. Machengete confirmed that a record $40million has been invested in the mobile telecoms sector which saw Zimbabwe getting more 4G/LTE coverage across the country. The Potraz report shows that 931 Long Term Evolution (LTE) base stations were erected in 2017 alone. Econet was the major investor with 634 LTE base stations followed by NetOne with 288 and Telecel lagging behind in infrastructure with only 9 LTE base stations.
Econet had the highest market share of 2G base stations, 3G base stations as well as LTE eNode Bs. There was no major change in the market share of base stations, save for the entry of Telecel into the LTE market with a market share of 1%.
There was an overall growth in base stations across operators as shown below. This brought the total number of base stations to 8,377 up from 8,278 recorded as at 30 September 2017. The growth in 2G and 3G base stations as well as LTE eNode Bs from 2015 to 2017.
