The Nigerian Communications Commission has revealed that poor power supply and insufficient fibre infrastructure would slow down the deployment of 5G network in Nigeria.

Bako Wakil, director, technical standards and network integrity at the NCC, gave the warning at a special session held by the commission about the benefits and challenges of deploying 5G, as part of Social Media Week Lagos.

According to Wakil, the commission does not have the ability to improve the power supply in the country and the poor state of the supply in the country needs to be addressed by other sectors of the economy.

He said that while the federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy is coordinating the NCC, the National Frequency Management Council and the National Broadband Plan should address broadband infrastructure problems.

He said: “Power infrastructure is a major challenge we will witness in the deployment of 5G across the country. As it stands today, all the base stations in the country are running on 24-hour generators and this is not good for the deployment of 5G because it’s latency is very small.

“Also, fibre infrastructure in the country is not enough to deploy 5G in the country. We do not have fibre capacity across the country. These two major infrastructures are crucial impediments in the deployment of 5G in the country.”

Kenneth Uzoekwe, an assistant director in the spectrum administration department of the commission, said: “There is enough spectrum bands that have been identified and can be used for the deployment of 5G. Six spectrum bands have been identified, so I can say we have enough. All we need now is to finalise the re-planning and re-farming, so that those occupying certain spectra can be relocated to other bands.”

tagged in: Bako Wakil, Kenneth Uzoekwe, Nigerian Communications Commission