Egypt regulator says mobile operators may receive 5G frequencies by 2020

Egypt’s telecoms operators are expected to receive the frequencies needed to deliver 5G mobile networks by 2020, the head of the telecoms regulator said on Monday.

The Egyptian National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) is currently studying the economic and technical feasibility of offering the new generation of mobile communications, said its head Mustafa Abdul Wahid at Cairo ICT conference in Cairo.

5G networks will rely on denser arrays of small antennas and the cloud to offer data speeds up to 50 or 100 times faster than current 4G networks and serve as critical infrastructure for a range of industries.

Deals to start building mass-market 5G networks are still largely a year away, yet by 2025, 1.2 billion people are expected to have access to 5G networks – a third of them in China, according to the global wireless trade group GSMA.

Unlike the upgrades of cellular standards 2G in the early 1990s, 3G around the millennium, and 4G in 2010, 5G standards is set to deliver not just faster phone and computer data but also help connect up cars, machines, cargo and crop equipment.