Prime
MTN begins transformation towards 5G technology
What you need to know:
The project shall take on a phased approach for the five-year period.
MTN has announced a five-year strategic partnership in which it will seek to transform its system towards a 5G-capable core network.
The transformation, which MTN said yesterday will be done in partnership with Huawei Technologies, will see the telecom’s network evolve into an all-cloud core network.
In July 2021, MTN said it had started a process in which it would automate its network in preparation for 5G technology.
The telecom, noted it has already entered a partnership with members under the Telecom Infra Project.
In a statement yesterday, Ms Sylvia Mulinge, the MTN chief executive officer, said the initiative will allow the telecom to have a future-oriented network with greater service agility, innovation for both consumer and industrial verticals, differentiation, improved operation efficiency and better customer experiences.
“In 2020, we were the first operator in East Africa to do a successful 5G network demonstration. While that was a non-commercial exhibition, this modernisation of our network comes in as a precursor of the 5G capabilities which Uganda is going to experience soon,” she says.
In July 2021, MTN said it had started a process in which it would automate its network in preparation for 5G technology.
The project implementation shall take on a phased approach and will be overseen by Huawei Technologies for the five-year period and is expected to culminate into a unification of the different existing legacy core network elements into a single vendor and simplified easy-to-manage cloud-native core network.
Dr Chris Baryomunsi, the Minister of ICT, said government welcomes the collaboration, noting that it will not only help MTN, but also other telecom companies to have improved quality of service.
“In this journey of digital transformation, we are running as a country, to keep pace with the rest of the world. This intervention is in line with the country’s vision 2040 that aims at transformation of our society,” he said.
