South Africa’s Communications and Digital Technologies Minister, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, has announced that her country plans on spending R27 billion [$1.92 billion USD] on 5G expansion. MyBroadband reported that the Minister spoke favorably about partnerships saying, “I am therefore pleased to announce that R27 billion is being pledged collectively by the operators and vendors to expand the 4G network, and to deploy the 5G and fiber technologies in South Africa, which has been tested by some operators.”
The announcement follows a recent move by South African mobile communications company MTN launching over 100 new 5G sites. The sites are concentrated in population dense urban areas in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Bloemfontein and Gqeberha.
The Minister noted that the country’s 5G investment will allow it to penetrate further into underserved regions and rural locations. She added that the outreach would also create jobs in those areas. “In line with [our] government’s vision of connecting 80 percent of public buildings by 2024,” she stated, “Our entities will connect 6,687 sites across the country.”
In order to free up spectrum, South Africa has also begun an ongoing analog switch-off project. “The analogue switch-off process is targeting to release the much-needed 700 MHz and 800 MHZ digital dividend spectrum,” explained the Minister. “The spectrum will be released in a phased provincial manner across the country towards our goal by the end of March 2022. This process, combined with the digital-to-digital migration, will make available a total of 168 MHz spectrum in each of the provinces,” she added.
Ndabeni-Abrahams made a public appeal to encourage citizens to support 5G roll-out efforts. “We call upon everyone across the country to rally behind us when we pave the way for a better South Africa for ourselves and the future generation,” she said.
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