MTN South Africa has officially launched its 5G network, a first for its 21 operations across Africa and the Middle East. The 5G network covers areas of Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as Bloemfontein and Port Elizabeth.
The launch comes on the back of government’s allocation of temporary spectrum and extensive 5G trials and testing. One of the key innovations driving the broad roll-out by MTN has been the adoption of Dynamic Spectrum Sharing equipment, supplied by Huawei, to overcome the lack of dedicated 5G spectrum. Ericsson is the supplier of MTN's 5G radio network.
MTN will deliver 5G connectivity on the 3.5 GHz band at 58 sites including Johannesburg, Cape Town and Bloemfontein, as well as use the 2,100 MHz and 1,800 MHz bands at 35 sites. The operator is re-farming some 4G spectrum to allow it to run 4G and 5G services at the same time, in the same band. This allows for easier migration of network technology from LTE to 5G and allows the company to deploy 5G using existing spectrum assets in the absence of additional high demand spectrum. MTN deployed 5G sites on the 2,100 MHz band in Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth.
In addition, it will use the 700 MHz band at five sites for extensive coverage in small towns, including Port Alfred, Hopetown, Virginia Queenstown and Tsantsabane. The operator will finally use the 28 GHz range at three sites in Hatfield (Pretoria), Edenvale and Durban.
Meanwhile, MTN was the first in the southern hemisphere to demonstrate AAA game streaming over its 5G network. In a partnership with Emerge Gaming, MTN demonstrated GameGloud on 5G streamed to a Huawei P40 Pro phone.
Huawei, which supplied massive MIMO equipment for the network, said MTN achieved download speeds at various locations in Johannesburg over 600Mbps, with latencies averaging 15ms.
