Huawei Technologies has partnered with Namibia's largest telecoms operator, MTC, to introduce the first 4.5G trial in Africa.
A statement from Huawei notes that in addition to trailing the 4.5G network, MTC will now commercially roll out an LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) network in Namibia.
A speed test showed the peak download speed of an LTE-A network reached 300Mbps, and a 4.5G network reached 1Gbps, the statement reads.
"MTC and Huawei have been working together as strategic partners for a very long time, providing the best telecom network services to consumers in Namibia," says Miguel Geraldes, CEO of MTC.
Geraldes adds: "Our cooperation in the innovative LTE-A and 4.5G technologies is a milestone of our strategic relation, and it also marks the beginning of gigabit society where consumers could enjoy faster and better mobile broadband experience, and the mobile broadband network with high speed, low latency, and big capacity enables the development of virtual reality, 4K high resolution video, Internet of things, and many other new business opportunities. The digital economy will be boosted by all these new businesses. "
According to Wallace Yin, MD of Huawei Namibia, 4.5G is the natural evolution of 4G and necessary transition to 5G.
"Huawei came up with the comprehensive concept of 4.5G in 2014, and already became the major player in 4.5G research and development and deployment with 20 commercial and trial 4.5G networks deployed around the world.
"As a strategic partner, Huawei will continue to work closely with MTC to provide a faster and better broadband network to Namibia," says Yin.
Huawei also emphasised 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 better aid the development of Internet of things, supporting up to 100 000 connections per cell.
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