The telco’s fierce battle for more market share and the deployment of advanced technology became intense since it secured 5G license from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). Run-up to that, in March Airtel announced the milestone of upgrading its entire footprint of cell sites to 4G.

The operator said its 50 million+ customers in the country can now tap into flawless voice call experiences, as all 2G and 3G sites have been upgraded to the advanced network standard.

Surendran Chemmenkotil, (now former) Chief Executive and Managing Director, said that the operator ‘is committed to delivering mobile broadband to the whole country including remote locations as connectivity has a direct correlation with boosting the nation’s GDP”.

“Our commitment is to our customers and we are focused on ensuring that they continue to get the right and best experience on our network. This exercise is inspired by the fact that we want to serve our customers better and we also want to contribute significantly to deepening broadband expansion in Nigeria as this has a direct correlation to GDP and economic productivity of a country, ” Chemmenkotil said.

Findings:

A team at Enext Wireless, an engineering company that focuses on improving user experience in Mobile Broadband Wireless Communications, carried out survey on the ‘Airtel upgraded 3G cell sites to 4G LTE’, and came up with report:

“Our survey of Airtel service from Lagos to Ekiti shows many sites with 3G coverage but no 4G LTE coverage”, Remi Adeyeye, the President of Enext Wireless Inc. said.

“In other words, Airtel does not offer LTE service on all of its 3G cell sites”, he claimed.

The report also counters Airtel’s claim of offering VoLTE nationwide:

“Voice calls from our VoLTE-enabled UEs in Lagos and Ibadan are assigned to CSFB, not VoLTE. In other words, Airtel does not offer VoLTE nationwide in Nigeria”.

On June 17 2023, TechEconomy reported that Airtel Nigeria’s readiness to launch 5G Network and on Monday June 19, 2023, Airtel organized its media launch of the service with mouth-watering offers to the consumers.

Femi Oshinlaja, Chief Commercial Officer at Airtel Nigeria, said 5G services will be available in four major cities of Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, Lagos, Ogun and Rivers States, adding that services would be extended to other parts of the country subsequently.

Shockingly, the researchers at Enext Wireless revealed that Airtel has been assigning their 5G UEs (user equipment) to 5G in some areas in Lagos since May 19, 2023.

“In other words, Airtel has already ‘launched’ 5G network, since we have not changed our SIMs or specifically requested 5G service from Airtel”.

So, why is this a problem?

“5G network should not have been offered to the public before it is launched”, the report said adding reasons ‘”Airtel’s announcement of June 19th 5G launch is a farce”.

“Airtel has been assigning our 5G-capable UEs to 5G since May 19, 2023. This suggests that

“Airtel was assigning us to a network we did not know existed, that had not been ‘launched’.

Airtel could simply have barred our 5G UEs from accessing its 5G network until that network was ready to be launched.

“Why collect money from us for a network that was not ready (launched)?

Why this could be debated as a test-phase before the launch, it was not clear if the telco notified its customers about the 5G launch as at May 19, which was exactly a month before the official media launch.

That’s impressive result, right? One of the key highlights of the telecom industry performance was the generation of $820.8 million for the federal government from 5G spectrum licences fees paid by three eventual winning operators, MTN, MAFAB and Airtel.

So, this week, Enext Wireless Inc., an engineering company that focuses on improving user experience in Mobile Broadband Wireless Communications, carried out a study of MTN 5G in Lagos as they searched for possible areas Airtel has started deploying its 5G in the State with estimated 24 million population.

Comparison of 5G from MTN with 5G from Airtel in Lagos by Enext Wireless

Below, Enext Wireless team selected throughput.

The three selections available are;

• Uplink,
• Downlink and
• Ping.

For throughput,

• Excellent is higher than 10 Mbps
• Good is between 5 Mbps and 10 Mbps
• Fair is from 1 Mbps to 5 Mbps
• Usable is from 0.100 Mbps to 1 Mbps
• Poor is lower than .100 Mbps

The team covered the same route and used the same device type for both networks.

The snapshots show the different points where the devices were assigned 5G resources.

Please visit here to decide which is better. To see the actual value for a bin, click on the bin. You will also see the date the data was collected.

According to the report, Nigeria mobile broadband ranks 56th in the internet quality index due to low internet speeds.

“The country has one of the slowest broadband connection speeds globally (13.45 Mbps), ranking 105th, and slightly faster mobile internet (17.91 Mbps), ranking 96th,” said the report. “However, the country’s broadband speed growth is one of the fastest on the planet, ranking 16th.”

Interestingly, the telecom industry regulator in Nigeria – the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has set of KPIs to ensure the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) maintain appreciable quality of service (QoS). But how are the MNOs fairing? Can you as a consumer help to improve the quality of mobile broadband in Nigeria? Enext believes you can!

Enext Wireless, through its dynamic National Independent Wireless Broadband Quality Reporting (NIWBQR), provides the public and the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) a level of visibility into the quality of LTE access in the country.

Early last year, Enext Wireless showcased few components of its flagship – Enext Metrics.

Quality of Mobile Broadband in Nigeria

• 1G and 2G were for mobile voice connection services
• 3G was for mobile voice and some data connection services
• 4G is for internet data connection services which allow for multiple forms of communication – voice, video, multimedia, internet of things, etc.
• 5G extends the data communication capabilities of 4G to increase connection speed and density and allow for the creation of unique communication services within the same network (network slicing).
• All of the above depend on effective utilization of the airwave. And the more advanced the standard, the higher the demand on the quality of the utilization of the airwave.
• It is not sufficient to accept what the service providers say about the quality of their networks when users can independently verify that quality
• EMETRICS (available here) provides a means for such independent verification

How you can help

• Use EMETRICS to find the quality of mobile broadband (LTE or 5G) at your location.
• Let your service provider know you would like them to provide measurement data to Enextgen or use Enext Wireless’ measurement tool (Enextlog), if there is no data for your location or area.
• Share with us any observed lack of correlation between its ranking and your experience at your location.
• Spread the news that Enext Wireless provides information on the quality of mobile broadband.
  • The more users, the more areas covered
  • The more areas covered the higher the incentive for the operators to pay attention to the quality of their mobile broadband networks.
• Realize that this service is offered by a company whose primary interest is in looking out for the Nigerian public
• Understand that quality of service rating should flow from those receiving the service to those offering it, not the other way around.
• Don’t rely on self-serving quality reports from network operators.

Usage Guide

• The key information is conveyed in color codes
  • You have LTE coverage if the EMETRICS rank is not RED
  • RED means not to expect reliable LTE coverage.
  • The other codes – saddle brown, yellow, blue and green are for use in optimizing RF quality.
• Toggle Full Screen to change MNOs.
• Use Report Selection for viewing the other measurements that are primarily for technical use.
  • Ping is for packet latency which provides some indication of application layer performance
  • Uplink and downlink throughput data will show up under the appropriate selection (we often do not collect these)

The focus of its measurements is to improve RF quality, which is the foundation for reliable mobile internet access.