The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) plans to conduct the second trial of 5G in some part of the country on Thursday prior to the launch of the technology. In its ‘Draft Consultation Document for Deployment of Fifth Generation (5G) Mobile Technology in Nigeria’, the NCC disclosed that six locations across the nation were selected for this trial.
The locations included, Abuja, Calabar, Lagos, Kano, Abeokuta, and Ibadan. The commission said the trial is necessary and would enable the industry regulator to validate the national policy on 5G for the digital economy. The trial will be conducted by Airtel Networks Limited and its Original Equipment Manufacturer on Thursday.
The first trial was held in 2019 in Abuja and was conducted through the MTN Nigeria Communications Plc. The key parameters it was looking out for included: Throughput, latency and jitter measurements; Co-channel interference impact on QoS; Handover performance between access points (as applicable); Type/models of 5G terminals used for the test; Types of services (voice, data, video, etc.) and; Health and safety (EMF radiation level).
During the 2019 trials, the NCC disclosed that a 2GB movie was downloaded within 17 secs on 5G (using 26GHz) and 5mins on 4G network (using 3.5GHz) with a maximum download throughput of 1.7Gbps and 70Mbps respectively in Abuja.
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