Vodacom Launches 5G Network in 3 South African Cities

South African Mobile Operator, Vodacom Group, has launched Africa’s first live 5G mobile network in three cities; Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town. The company announced on Monday.

This comes after Vodacom was recently allocated temporal extra spectrum by the telecoms regulator for the period of the national state of disaster, including 1 x 50 MHz in the 3.5 GHz band, which has been used to fast-track its 5G launch, it said in a statement as quoted by Reuters.

In February, Vodacom Chief Executive Shameel Joosub said that the company was expected to offer 5G mobile services in South Africa this year by using a network being built by another African operator, Liquid Telecom.

The launch 5G will enable Vodacom to achieve the 40% increase in mobile network traffic and the 250% increase in fixed traffic experienced during the five-week-long coronavirus lockdown, said the firm in a statement.

“Vodacom’s 5G launch in South Africa comes at an important time as it will help us improve our network efficiency during the COVID-19 national state of disaster,” Joosub said.

Vodacom expects to expand its 5G rollout as more 5G enabled smartphones, Wi-Fi and fixed wireless access routers become available.

In order to fix the wireless router, the company is currently selling the LG V50 5G smartphone and Huawei 5G CPE PRO fixed.