Mr Isa Pantami, Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, says the Five Generation (5G) network will be deployed in Nigeria in January 2022, and will aid surveillance against vandalism of public assets. The minister disclosed this on Thursday in Maiduguri at a Town Hall Meeting to address vandalism of power and telecommunications infrastructure. Pantami, who was represented by Mr Ubale Maska, Commissioner for Technical Services, Nigeria Communication Commission, said the 5G network was recently approved by the Federal Executive Council for increased connectivity. The minister disclosed that there were over 50,000 telecommunication sites across the country, which made it difficult to man manually except through deployment of modern technology. He also disclosed that there were about 16,000 reported outages by mobile network operators – MTN, Globacom, Airtel and 9Mobile – from January 2021 to July 2021.

Source: Punch September 23, 2021 15:45 UTC