CHINA’s telecommunication giant Huawei and MTC, the largest operator in Namibia, announced the commercial use of LTE-Advanced network in Windhoek, Namibia and launched the first 4.5G trial in Africa last month. A speed test showed the peak download speed of LTE-A network reached 300Mbps, and the 4.5G network reached 1Gbps at the launch.

“I am happy that this new technology will complement the Harambee Plan, and I am looking forward to the introduction of the new technology,” said Namibian President HageGeingob following the launch.

Miguel Gereldes, CEO of MTC, said during his presentation: “The cooperation between MTC and Huawei in the innovative LTE-A and 4.5G technologies marks the beginning of a Gigabit society where consumers could enjoy a faster and better mobile broadband experience, and the mobile broadband network with high speed, low latency and big capacity that enables the development of virtual reality, like 4K high resolution video, the Internet of Things, and many others new business opportunities. The digital economy will be boosted by all these new businesses.”

As introduced by Wallace Yin, Managing Director of Huawei Namibia, 4.5G is the natural evolution of 4G and the necessary transition to 5G. Huawei came up with the comprehensive concept of 4.5G in 2014, and has already become a major player in 4.5G research and development with 20 commercial and trial 4.5G networks deployed around the world

“As an ICT advisor to many governments around the world, we also look forward to sharing our global expertise and solutions with the government of Namibia, in order to promote ICT development and boost digital economy here,” said Yin.

Huawei also emphasised that 4.5G has much better performance in terms of bandwidth, network capacity and network latency, compared with 4G.

The technology will allow for speeds of up to 1Gbps over mobile and latency of less than 10 milliseconds.

4.5G will also better aid the development of the Internet of Things, supporting up to 100,000 connections per cell.

(The story was originally published on Business Day on May 4th, 2016.)