GQEBERHA – Vodacom Eastern Cape Region has switched on live 5G mobile network in three major municipal districts in the Eastern Cape, namely Nelson Mandela Bay, Buffalo City and Sarah Baartman. The 5G network is currently available on seventeen live 5G sites in Gqeberha, Motherwell township, East London and Jeffreys Bay and supports both mobile and fixed wireless access services. Vodacom customers with 5G enabled devices, and within a 5G coverage area, are now able to access the new 5G network in Eastern Cape province.

In May 2020, Vodacom switched on South Africa's first live 5G mobile network in three cities – Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town. This network supports both mobile and fixed wireless services and is currently available in Free State, Northern Cape, Gauteng, Western Cape, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu Natal provinces.

To launch the 5G network in Eastern Cape, Vodacom used the temporary spectrum assigned by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), specifically 1x50 MHz in the 3.5 GHz band. Vodacom has decided to use the 700 MHz band for wide scale mobile, 5G coverage and is supplementing network capacity with 3.5 GHz where required.

Mpumelelo Khumalo, Managing Executive for Vodacom Eastern Cape Region says: “We have always maintained that our networks are our key differentiator and the basis of our competitive advantage. South Africa just like the rest of the world is in the Digital Age and therefore it was important for us to invest in the next generation of communication technology to give our customers access to networks that provide faster speeds and support the digital economy. Crucially, our investment in 5G is in line with our commitment to connect the unconnected and will ultimately help the region bridge the digital divide between the urban and rural areas of the province by extending access to affordable mobile broadband, especially as an alternative to fibre connectivity in underserviced areas.”

Short for the ‘fifth generation' wireless mobile network, 5G is the newest iteration of our global mobile networking standard. It promises much higher download and upload speeds, lower latency (the time it takes for a connected service to respond to your command) and far greater capacity, speed and increased coverage. 5G offers three major advantages:

• Speed: 5G is around 10 times faster than 4G. It is designed to work at average speeds of 150-200Mbps, and peak speeds can reach above 1Gbps. This means people will be able to download a full 4K film in around 3 minutes (compared to over 15 minutes on 4G).
• Low latency: latency is the time it takes for a device connected to an online service to respond to your inputs or instructions, otherwise known as lag. Reducing this time lag is crucial in making, say, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications faster to respond.
• Huge capacity: this just means that it can handle lots of people and services accessing the network at the same time, even in densely populated areas.

Given these advantages, here are some of the things 5G network can deliver:

• High 4k and 8K video quality movies, cloud gaming, remote education and remote healthcare
• Download movies much faster and stream games without any interruptions.
• Carry out remote surgery in near real time using robotic arms.
• Benefit from AR guidance and training via smart glasses or car windscreens.
• Help drones co-operate in emergency situations.
• Enable smart city infrastructure (such as traffic lights) more efficiently.
• Provide faster speeds and this increase in speed will allow IoT devices, including those with healthcare and industry applications, to communicate and share data faster than ever.

More 5G devices are expected to become accessible to South Africans in future. Already we are seeing the introduction of increasingly cost effective 5G enabled smartphones around the world, not just in the premium segment but also in the mid-tier segment.