South Africa’s persistent power shortages could impact on the deployment of fifth-generation (5G) technologies across the country, says nonprofit wireless industry body Wireless Access the Providers’ Association executive committee member Paul Colmer.
South Africa’s 5G network deployments are accelerating, he indicates, highlighting the latest news that Nokia has won a major deal to expand MTN’s 5G network to more than 2 800 additional sites around the country.
However, while 5G will deliver many benefits, including faster download speeds, lower latency and better network capacity, it also has increased power consumption, a challenge in a country that faces prolonged loadshedding bouts of several hours a day.
“One of the selling points of 5G is that it is more ecofriendly than long-term evolution (LTE), but even though 5G consumes less power per bit of data, because it transmits significantly more data than LTE, the net result is also significantly higher power consumption,” Colmer points out.
“This is why power – or rather the lack of it – can ultimately be a 5G killer,” he warns.
Further, while the 5G roll-out, as with fibre and LTE, will likely initially take place in higher-income Living Standard Measure, or LSM, and high-density urban areas, as it entails a large upfront investment and a measurable return on investment to make it a viable investment proposition, in rural regions, where communities are poorer and less densely populated and many do not have the phones to use it, the investment required will be exponentially more, owing to the ongoing power crisis.
“Not only is the power crisis causing service disruptions across the board, it is changing the dynamics and threatening the future plans for the vendors currently committing to the 5G roll-out in the first place,” Colmer adds.