Page 25 - EngineerIt February 2021

PANEL DISCUSSION

Panel Discussion: Is SA ready for 5G?

hree panellists representing research, regulatory and industry took part in the there are a few things that come to
February EngineerIT panel discussion on 5G and South Africa’s readiness and mind. The first thing is the core
Tallied subjects. The panellists were: infrastructure.
If you spoke to someone on the
• Dr Moshe Masonta (Senior CSIR researcher) street about what they think about 5G,
• Dr Charley Lewis (ICASA councillor) the answer is likely to be “a quick way of
• Ian Jansen van Rensburg (VMWare) accessing the internet or a quicker way
of accessing the internet from any phone
All three panellists said they believe that South Africa is ready for 5G. Dr Lewis said that or from any device”.
is the short answer. “It is correct to say that there is an enormous amount of hype As Dr. Lewis said, there are already
around 5G. It was described by one wag in the industry, some time back, as a solution in sites in South Africa running 5G
search of a problem.” successfully, with no issues. But it's not
“We already have active 5G networks commercially available in the country. Rain just about the connectivity speed and
was the first to launch a fixed wireless access network and more recently, the two the connectivity itself. It's about the
dominant players in the market, Vodacom and MTN, have both launched 5G services in whole digital infrastructure connected to
the country, fixed wireless access and mobile. Some of these services were launched 5G and the containerisation of services
on the back of the temporary emergency spectrum, assigned to them under the Covid- at the edge, the far edge and also at the
19 pandemic. customer site.
He said that GSM predicted that in 2025, some 30 million subscribers in Sub- In November 2019, ICASA held a 5G
Saharan Africa would be using 5G but this is actually a very small percentage of the workshop which focused on 5G use
market, about 5%. South Africa at the same point is predicted to have something like 73 cases. There were literally hundreds of
million smart phones in the country. Of course, a very small percentage of those are possible use cases put on the table,
likely to be 5G phones.” It is very much likely to be, in my view, a market for the affluent. many of which could have already been
So yes, simply I'd say the market is currently ready in South Africa”. implemented on 4G. I asked Dr Lewis
Dr Masonta said that South Africa is a unique economy with a huge gap between the which use case he believed would be
poor and the rich. So while the 5G may not reach all parts of the country, just like with more practical and ready for
4G, the country, in his opinion, is ready for 5G, especially for the deployment in the sub implementation.
six gigahertz frequency bands. “It's really going to depend upon the
Talking about the 4IR revolution which will require the connectivity speeds of 5G, he extent to which we in South Africa can
said that we can expect one million devices or machines connected per square identify applications, services and
kilometre. “These will be reliable low latency and enhanced mobile broadband devices products that are going to benefit and
that will require some form of connectivity. 5G will fit well into the market where no fibre exploit the opportunities that are offered
is available. by the 5G standard, the greater degree
Ian Jansen van Rensburg said:” I think we are ready. From a VMware perspective of bandwidth, the speed of access, the
low latency of the response times, those
kinds of things are going to drive the
business cases.
The solution for 5G is similar to what
some people have argued in relation to
the fourth industrial revolution (4IR). It's
really about identifying, developing and
finding applications that speak
specifically to the South African
environment. There are specific sets of
challenges enabling the provision of
services that can speak to our economic
and social developmental imperatives in
the country.
COVID-19 has exposed a
Dr Moshe Masonta Dr Charley Lewis Ian Jansen van Rensburg
pandemic of two countries, a pandemic

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