Botswana MNO Mascom has launched four 5G sites in the capital Gaborone as part of plans to roll out 111 sites across the country before year-end.

Mascom CEO Dzene Makhwade-Seboni said: “Connectivity drives socioeconomic digital transformation and with its unprecedented connectivity capabilities, 5G will take us and our society to a whole new level. It is bound to revolutionise industries and enhance customer experience and advance us as a nation towards the achievement of our Fourth Industrial Revolution ambitions.”

She said the socio-economic benefits of 5G-enabled smart cities are immense. “Residential services, such as streetlights, traffic signals and security, which are part of the national broadband strategy, will benefit from 5G.”

The country’s Minister of Transport and Communications Thulagano Segokgo said 5G is part of accelerators, including Artificial Intelligence, cloud computing, big data and Internet of Things, used to catalyse the digital economy for the country.

“Digital transformation is broadening and mixing business boundaries in all sectors, which will increase both diversity and uncertainty. With 5G’s network design concepts and integrative capabilities, it’s possible to combat these uncertainties.”

Segokgo said the fundamental benefit of 5G is the speed at which data is transferred throughout the network, allowing for wider use of connected devices.

Botswana’s healthcare sector is one of several that stand to benefit from 5G, according to the Minister.

Advanced wireless communications and information processing technology can streamline medical diagnosis and better allocate and share medical resources and data. 

“As we move towards enablement of e-Health in Botswana the health sector has significant 5G use cases and opportunities, many medical IT groups deal with surgical equipment that needs to be both connected and air gapped from their networks for security reasons.”