Although 5G is more power-efficient than LTE, because it offers significantly greater speeds, cellular towers utilising the technology use more electricity than LTE. It has been disclosed by Vodacom and MTN that they have spent billions on batteries. Vodacom claims that it has been spending at least R1 billion annually.
According to MTN, diesel costs them billions of rands. MTN claims that during stage 5 and stage 6 power outages, 450,000 million liters of fuel are consumed per month.
The 5G network in South Africa with the best coverage is now run by Rain, and Telkom’s 5G network went live in 2022. According to Wireless Access Provider’s Association executive committee member Paul Colmer there are many smart people that for years have been working on the strategy of rolling out national 5G networks.
Due to the fact that these prolonged power outages were not taken into consideration, all the estimates have become obsolete. Similar to how fiber and LTE rollouts started, 5G deployments started in more affluent areas.
This is because it needs a quantifiable return on investment (ROI) in order to be lucrative, as well as a sizeable initial investment. Most people in densely populated communities rural areas do not own 5G-capable phones.
However, the power problem “is changing the dynamics and endangering the future plans for the suppliers already committed to the 5G deployment in the first place,” in addition to generating service disruptions across the board.
Load-shedding affects implementation costs, which affect ROI. Also, from a business standpoint, deployment cannot take place if ROI is incorrect.
“The issue has never been a lack of access to the Internet; rather, it is a shortage of access that is reasonably priced. The perfect storm of a 5G deployment disrupted by power would further exacerbate the situation and expand rather than bridge that difference,” he said. mybroadband