While immediate operational hurdles such as energy supply, remain a priority, industry experts at Enextgen Wireless are advocating for a more proactive, data-driven approach to ensure a superior “Quality of Experience (QOE)” for all subscribers.

Navigating the Energy-Connectivity Nexus

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) recently identified disruptions in diesel supply by the National Oil and Gas Suppliers Association (NOGASA) as a primary cause of service outages in Abuja.

These bottlenecks have significantly impacted colocation providers like IHS Nigeria, which powers essential base stations for major Mobile Network Operators (MNOs).

To mitigate such vulnerabilities in the future, Enextgen suggests that the industry should accelerate the transition to sustainable energy solutions, such as solar and hybrid systems, reducing the dependency on volatile fossil fuel supply chains.

In a recent EMETRICS analysis, Enexgten Wireless reported:

“Our understanding is that the NCC’s mandate is to regulate telecommunication services, through spectrum licensing and other means. NCC has the authority to regulate all aspects of telecommunications services, and hold service providers accountable for the quality of their networks/services.

In reality, it often appears that NCC goes out of its way to protect telecom services providers. NCC can be more effective in meeting its mandates for high quality of experience in mobile networks by allowing/encouraging the MNOs to be more accountable for the quality of their networks.

The MNOs are commercial businesses. NCC should let them breathe, not smother them with love. NCC should be less dedicated to making excuses for them. Instead, NCC should facilitate their ability to provide the best quality of experience obtainable with their deployed infrastructure, and penalize them for inattention to quality issues. Our platform/service makes this far easier to accomplish”

Beyond Crisis Management: Moving Toward Proactive Accountability

Current analysis suggests that while the NCC’s efforts to facilitate stakeholder dialogue are valuable, there is a strategic opportunity to evolve the regulatory framework. Rather than managing issues after they occur, an advisory approach emphasizes:

• Empowering Market Discipline: Allowing commercial MNOs to take greater direct accountability for network quality can foster a more competitive and self-correcting market.
• Performance-Based Oversight: Encouraging the best possible experience from existing infrastructure while maintaining clear penalties for avoidable inattention to quality issues.
• Transparency in Reporting: Bridging the gap in shared Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to ensure that technical standards keep pace with technology rollouts like 5G.

The Role of Independent Verification

Technical data logged in early December 2025 highlights specific areas where network optimization is needed.

For instance, reports indicate high connection drop rates across both 4G and 5G networks in Abuja , with MTN showing a drop rate nearly double that of Airtel in certain 4G segments.

The table below shows average EMETRICS ranking of coverage signal as the probe transversed local government areas:

Enextgen Wireless also pledged its readiness to work with the NCC as an independent verification and monitoring systems to  offer a complementary infrastructure that can:

1. Identify Avoidable Drops: Pinpoint RF optimization issues before they lead to customer complaints.
2. Enhance Spectrum Efficiency: Unobtrusively improve signal quality, which unwittingly leads to better revenue generation for operators through more efficient spectrum use.
3. Optimize 5G Transitions: Manage the “Quality of Experience” as users move between 5G, 4G, and 3G to prevent substantial increases in packet loss and latency.

“The goal for 2026 is a telecom ecosystem where the regulator and operators work in a complementary fashion.

“By integrating independent technical analysis into the national monitoring strategy, the NCC can shift from a reactive “defense” of the industry to a proactive ‘facilitation’ of excellence”, Engr. Aderemi Adeyeye, the president/CEO of Enext Inc., affirmed.

For the Abuja subscriber, the path to reliable connectivity lies in this balance of robust infrastructure, independent data verification, and a regulatory environment that prioritizes the end-user’s daily experience.

Instead, the company argues, the arrangement risks benefiting mobile network operators (MNOs) far more than the public, contrary to NCC’s mandate of ensuring high quality of service nationwide.

In a technical assessment (report) sighted by Techeconomy, Enextgen Wireless said the NCC–Ookla collaboration relies heavily on crowd-sourced data, which, while useful, does not provide the level of diagnostic insight required to uncover persistent coverage gaps, high connection-drop rates, and severe latency issues plaguing users across the country.

Crowd-Sourced Data Helps MNOs, Not Consumers

Enextgen notes that Ookla’s reporting “serves a purpose, mostly for helping MNOs,” but does not expose the root causes of poor quality of experience for everyday users.

Their argument is based on years of independent measurements from their EMETRICS platform, which uses controlled testing to evaluate real-world network performance across Nigeria.

According to the company, crowd-sourced data often masks serious quality-of-service failures.

For instance, Enextgen’s measurements at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport show connection drop rates of 33–63% on MTN’s 4G network, figures that do not appear in coverage maps derived from crowd-sourced samples.

Similarly, MTN’s 3G network showed drop-call rates as high as 46%, with round-trip latency exceeding 900ms, making basic connectivity unreliable even where signal bars appear strong.

“These realities do not surface in NCC’s new system,” Engineer Aderemi Adeyeye, CEO of Enextgen argued, noting that the NCC’s published coverage map “does not show the high rate of connection drops” or the recurring handovers to lower-quality 3G networks, which substantially degrade user experience.

“Nigerian MNOs Do Not Prioritise Basic Coverage Quality”

Enextgen Wireless expressed concern that the NCC’s current approach could allow mobile operators to maintain broad coverage claims while ignoring fundamental radio-network optimisation, such as proper signal quality, interference management, or improved success rates for internet access.

“Our experience is that Nigerian MNOs do not care that much about the basic quality of their coverage signal,” he stated. “Connection drop rates and low internet access success rates are prevalent and avoidable, yet the necessary actions for maintaining high-quality radio networks are not receiving adequate attention.”

A Better Approach to Protect Consumers

Enextgen maintains that if the NCC truly intends to uphold its mandate of ensuring high-quality mobile networks, the Commission must adopt more rigorous, controlled-measurement tools capable of identifying, and forcing operators to fix, coverage and quality gaps.

“For NCC to meet its self-proclaimed mandate of maintaining high mobile network quality, it needs our platform/service or an equivalent,” he said, pointing to its EMETRICS system, which has been in operation since 2019.

The company warns that without such actionable, engineering-grade analytics, the NCC–Ookla partnership may generate attractive dashboards and broad coverage statistics, but fail to address the real-world pain points, call drops, slow browsing, poor video streaming, and unreliable 4G/5G transitions, experienced daily by millions of Nigerians.

Bottom Line

Enextgen Wireless insists that only diagnostic, engineering-level assessments, not broad crowd-sourced averages, can help Nigeria close its chronic quality-of-service gaps.

Until then, the company argues, NCC’s new reporting system may provide more value to operators, who can point to improved superficial metrics, than to the consumers whose connectivity frustrations remain unresolved.

The report acknowledges that vandalism of network equipment remains a serious challenge for operators and the industry at large, describing it as a criminal act that should be swiftly prosecuted.

However, it warns against using vandalism as a blanket explanation for poor network performance.

“A standing tower with a faulty mains rectifier left unfixed provides no better coverage than one destroyed by vandalism,” the report released Enextgen Wireless led by Engineer Aderemi Adeyeye notes, stressing that ongoing measurement of user experience is essential to truly assess the impact of vandalism on network quality.

Key Findings (August 2025):

Coverage and Signal Strength: It could be deduced from the report that MTN’s 5G network posted the strongest RSRP (−89 dBm), indicating better signal quality than Airtel (−96 dBm on 5G) and Globacom (−97 dBm on LTE).

RSRP refers to Reference Signal Received Power; a key metric in cellular networks (like 4G and 5G) that measures the power of the specific reference signals broadcast by a cell tower and received by your device.

Network Quality (SINR & RSRQ): MTN 5G also led with a 17 dB SINR, a key metric for data throughput and user experience, followed by Airtel 5G at 15 dB.

SINR or Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio is a key metric in wireless communications that measures the strength of a desired signal relative to the combined power of all interfering signals and background noise.

A higher SINR value indicates a better quality wireless connection, leading to more stable and faster data transfer speeds, fewer dropped calls, and improved customer satisfaction

Latency: Airtel LTE delivered the lowest average latency at 73 ms, ahead of MTN 5G (78 ms). By comparison, MTN LTE posted 165 ms, which could translate to slower response times in real-world applications.

Connection Reliability: Globacom LTE achieved the lowest call drop rate (1.39%), while MTN LTE had the highest (4.21%), exceeding the target of <1%.

Internet Access Success Rate: Interestingly, the report indicates none of the operators reached the benchmark target of 99.90% access success rate, underscoring room for improvement in network availability and consistency.

Industry Context & Recommendations

Enextgen argues that independent, regular measurement is critical to holding operators accountable for service quality. It calls for a framework where both operators’ profit motives and subscribers’ right to reliable service are protected.

“As MNOs’ right to focus on their bottom line is protected, so too should the right of ordinary subscribers to value for fees paid,” the report sighted byTecheconomy states.

The findings come amid increased regulatory and public pressure on Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to improve user experience, as well as concerns over the economic cost of poor connectivity on businesses and individuals.

The Bottom Line

While infrastructure vandalism remains a threat to Nigeria’s telecoms sector, quality of experience issues cannot be fully attributed to vandalism.

Instead, Enextgen calls for data-driven transparency to pinpoint gaps in service delivery, benchmark performance, and guide both industry and policy interventions for better broadband outcomes.

In Nigeria’s evolving telecom sector, Enextgen Wireless is fast becoming a critical player in ensuring transparency, accountability, and measurable service delivery.

The Blind Spot in Nigeria’s Telecom Oversight

While mobile penetration continues to grow, the true quality of service (QoS) experienced by Nigerians often goes unmeasured, or worse, underreported.

Reports from operators can be partial which could also limit the regulator’s audits in scope. This creates a data vacuum, where neither subscribers nor policymakers have a full picture of how networks are truly performing.

Enextgen Wireless fills that gap

Through advanced tools, drive tests, and independent evaluations, the company provides objective, granular, and location-based performance data that reflects the real experience of users, not just promises on a coverage map.

What Sets Enextgen Apart?

• Unbiased Network Testing: Enextgen’s drive tests and reports evaluate all major MNOs equally, MTN, Airtel, Glo, and 9mobile, using the same methodology.
• Transparent Benchmarks: From download speeds and latency to call drop rates and LTE availability, its reports shine a light on network realities.
• City-by-City Analysis: No more vague national averages. Enextgen delivers hyperlocal insights, from Lagos to Abuja, Enugu to Port Harcourt.
• Real-Time Impact: Its findings can immediately inform regulatory action, network investments, and public advocacy.

Why Regulators, MNOs and Consumers Should Pay Attention:

For NCC and Policymakers

Enextgen offers a third-party lens to validate MNO claims, spotlight underserved regions, and design policy interventions backed by real-world data. Ignoring such insights risks prolonging digital exclusion and eroding public trust.

For MNOs

Far from being a threat, Enextgen’s data can serve as a strategic advantage, helping operators identify problem areas, benchmark against competitors, and direct resources where they matter most.

For the Public and Civil Society

Consumers can use these reports to demand better service and transparency. Journalists, digital rights groups, and local governments now have a powerful evidence base to push for inclusive connectivity.

A Call to Embrace Accountability in a Digital Age

As Nigeria deepens its digital economy, rolls out 5G, and seeks to close its broadband gaps, independent performance intelligence must sit at the heart of telecom reform.

Enextgen Wireless isn’t just publishing reports, it’s building a culture of accountability in one of the country’s most vital sectors.

To ignore it is to ignore the lived reality of millions of Nigerian users.
To embrace it is to chart a path toward a more connected, competitive, and consumer-focused telecom industry.

Explore the reports and methodology here.

The power of 5G lies in its ability to transform industries and user experiences through its core features such as ultra-fast speeds, low latency, massive Device connectivity, improved network capacity, network slicing, enhanced mobile broadband, energy efficiency, amongst others.

Ultimately, the combination of speed, low latency, and high reliability empowers the automation of factories, remote management of critical infrastructure, and smart logistics.

This transformation, often called Industry 4.0, will revolutionize manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, and other industries by enabling real-time data exchange and automation on a large scale.

Thus, 5G is much more than just faster internet—it is the foundation for a smarter, more connected world with wide-ranging applications across various sectors, from healthcare and transportation to entertainment and smart cities.

These are the features that make 5G outstanding when compared to 4G/LTE.

Thus, Enextgen Wireless conducted its National Independent Wireless Broadband Quality Reporting (NIWBQR) data collection in Victoria Island that covers MTN and Airtel 5G coverage, while dismissing Mafab’s as ‘too restrictive to be relevant…”

More so, the survey covered 4G LTE footprints for the mobile network operators including Globacom while 9mobile was missing [Visit the website here for details].

Details of the survey findings are shown below:

4G LTE Throughput following data collected on Victoria Island on August 30, 2024:

4G LTE Downlink Throughput August 30, 2024 (by subscription)

See details here.

4G LTE Packet Latency based on Dbata collected on Victoria Island on August 30, 2024

4G LTE Ping Results, August 30, 2024

5G NR Throughput

Data collected on Victoria Island on August 30, 2024. Only MTN and Airtel offer mobile 5G service to the public. In this survey, MTN provides larger 5G footprint than Airtel. Mafab’s offer of 5G is too restrictive to be relevant to our purpose of evaluating public mobile internet access.

5G NR Downlink Throughput August 30, 2024

NIWBQR Ranking

NIWBQR is Enextgen Wireless’ flagship National Independent Wireless Broadband Quality Reporting.

It ranks 4G LTE and 5G NR networks based on the quality of RF coverage and other selected KPIs.

Historical comparison

Commenting on the report, Engineer Remi Adeyeye, President/CEO Enextgen Inc., said:

“We have a platform for evaluating basic functionality of mobile broadband networks in Nigeria

“MNOs can use it to audit the quality of the networks deployed for them by their vendors.

“NCC can use it to set target KPIs for mobile broadband.

“Academic institutions can use it to provide training in some practical aspects of the deployment of mobile networks.

“For public visualization, visit here. All logged data are available for use in improving network quality. Contact us at marketing@enextwireless.com for further discussion”.

According to the ITU in its ‘Mobile Network Coverage Facts and Figures 2023’ report, this is in part due to the continued importance of older mobile technologies in Africa, such as 2G and 3G networks, the international agency on telecom and internet said in its latest report.

The report indicated that while 2G and 3G networks are being phased out in developed countries, they remain a key part of the telecommunications landscape in many African countries, especially those with lower-income economies like Nigeria.

According to the ITU, 2G and 3G networks are still the predominant technologies in use in many African countries including Nigeria.

This is because these networks offer a lower-cost option for providing basic mobile services, such as voice calls and text messages, in areas where 4G and 5G networks are not available.

There are still hundreds of towns and villages in all the country’s six geopolitical zones workout 4G and 5G networks.

As a result, ITU said, older technologies (2G and 3G) are likely to continue to play an important role in the African telecom industry. (ITU).

It noted that 3G coverage was at 19 per cent and 2G coverage at 10 per cent, adding that Africa continued to lag the world in network adoption with 5G already at 38 per cent and 4G at 52 per cent.

The union stated that in many countries older-generation mobile networks were being switched off in favour of new-generation networks.

It said, “5G enables the development of a digital ecosystem by connecting machines, objects, and devices with ultra-low latency and the potential to improve energy efficiency. This is the case for most European operators that plan to switch off 3G networks by December 2025 and for operators in the Asia-Pacific region.

“However, in some countries, the path is less clear, mainly because 2G and 3G networks retain a significant presence. This is the case notably in lower-income countries, where both technologies remain an important means of communication. In these countries, the main obstacles to 5G deployment and adoption include the high infrastructure costs, device affordability, and regulatory barriers.”

The United Nations body on telecommunications declared that since commercial deployment began in 2019, 5G coverage had increased to reach 40 per cent of the world population in 2023 with distribution very uneven.

It stated that while 89 per cent of the population in high-income countries was covered by a 5G network, coverage remained limited in low-income countries.

It expanded, “Europe boasts the most extensive 5G coverage, with 68 per cent of the population covered, followed by the Americas region (59 per cent) and the Asia-Pacific region (42 per cent). Coverage reaches 12 per cent of the population in the Arab States region and less than 10 per cent in the CIS region (eight per cent) and Africa region (six per cent).”

Speaking on broadband coverage, ITU noted that while the mobile-broadband network is already available to 95 per cent of the world population, bridging the coverage gap (i.e., the remaining five per cent) is proving difficult).

It added, “In the Africa region, the gap is shrinking but remains relatively high at 16 per cent, predominantly affecting the population of central and western Africa.”

They indicated that only about a dozen countries, including Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, have launched commercial 5G services.

The ITU’s report is a vindication of Enextgen Wireless, an engineering company that focuses on improving user experience in Mobile Broadband Wireless Communications.

The company had in December 2023 hinted that tampering with a cell site in Maiduguri should not cause a call to drop in Yaba, Lagos or vice-versa.

In fact, they communicated this to the industry regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

Enextgen Wireless is of the view that some MNOs are deploying propaganda machine to confuse the subscribers who, in many occasions, do not receive value for money paid.

“Use our platform or come up with similar platform to monitor mobile networks instead of making assumptions or repeating the propaganda of the MNOs”, the company wrote in a report obtained by Techeconomy.

In the report, the engineers showed examples of call drops from Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja.

“Those from Lagos and Port Harcourt were due to missing handoffs. Sure, these could be due to cable cuts. However, they appear often enough in MTN’s network that they should reflect on the KPIs published for MTN by NCC. They don’t. Those from MTN’s 5G in Abuja occurred at a stationary location”.

“The government should stop blaming the public for vandalism being the primary cause of poor network quality, in lieu of holding MNOs accountable.

“If vandalism is truly the cause of all mobile network quality issues, let the reports published by the NCC reflect the resulting network degradation”, the report reads in part.

The impact of the quality of the networks on individuals, small and enterprises and the government activities is beyond measure.

The mobile network operators (MNOs) are deploying services hence the need to ensure that service rendered is in commensurate with money spent by the customers.

This is chief among reasons Enextgen Wireless’ team of engineers wake up every morning to monitor the networks, analyze and offer independent and professional advice on how to get the best quality of service for the citizens and businesses.

“We make salient portions of our reports available as public service. The MNOs and their vendors as well as any interested party have access to the reports. A more detailed version is also available for first-ass signal quality analysis by subscription”, said Engineer Remi Adeyeye, the President and Chairman of Enext Inc.

Continuing, he wrote in the latest report on KPIs published by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the infrastructure deployment by the MNOs:

“We were curious as to how the KPIs published by the NCC could diverge from our own record and experience as much as they do. We also found it particularly interesting that the vandalism of and tampering with their infrastructure that the MNOs often complain about appear to have no impact on providing such excellent KPIs as published on NCC website. Although this could have been made possible by herculean efforts to maintain excellent KPIs by the MNOS, we don’t enjoy such excellent quality in our daily use of the networks”, Adeyeye said.

“Our primary focus since 2016 has been mobile broadband networks (4G LTE and (now) 5G NR). However, since most of the KPIs that are related to Radio Access Networks published by NCC address mostly their impact on voice connections which primarily use 2G and 3G networks in Nigeria, we decided to run verification tests for two of the key KPIs – Drop Call Rate and Call Setup Success Rate.

“We had one Call Origination phone for each of the four major national MNOs in our test vehicle making periodic calls to another phone on the same network but stationed at our Ibadan office, for the first test.
For the second test, we had all 8 phones (UE) placed in the test vehicle with the same calling pattern.

Report from the Enextgen Wireless tests:

In-vehicle placement of UEs

Mobile UEs to stationary UEs KPIs compared with published KPIs

KPIs for all UEs in the same vehicle compared with published KPIs

Needed changes

Four Key Findings in the Report

Enextgen bluntly stated that the formulas for Drop Call Rate and Connection Failure Rate used for the reports from the MNOs to NCC are suspect.

“The fact that they are could not possibly have been lost on the MNOs, given their expertise in this matter.

“A logical explanation then seems to be that the MNOs find the omissions in the formulas advantageous in that the inaccurate results they yield make their KPIs look better.

Secondly, “the KPIs that are published on NCC’s website do not support the repeated warnings about the negative impact of vandalism and willful destruction of telecom facilities on the networks. The KPIs portray networks that are almost perfect.

Thirdly, the independent report by Enextgen indicates that both MTN and Airtel claims that are very difficult to verify.

“Both claim they have deployed VoLTE nationwide. Yet most, if not all, of the calls we make on our Volte-capable phones are processed in Circuit Switched Fall Back, not VoLTE.  In promoting their VoLTE deployments, the MNOs touch on the benefits of VoLTE. We find that peculiar since they do not use VoLTE to handle most of our calls.

Fourtly, “Airtel has claimed that it has equipped all of its cell sites for LTE. Yet, it is very easy to find along any stretch of many routes, cell sites where 4G UEs are served in 3G or even 2G only”.

In conclusion, the first case with mobile to stationary calls depicts a more challenging condition since the mobile phones were all inside the office where signal quality for all the MNOs need improvement. The results reflect this.

The second case with all mobile devices in the same moving vehicle depicts a very favorable condition for the MNOs. Many of the measured KPIs are not too far off from the values published.

They might have been even closer if the more appropriate formulas had been used for the published KPIs since the reported KPIs would have been worse.

“There are substantial outliers. Our hope is that the concerned MNOs will make necessary improvement”, the report contains.

Recommendations

Enegten Wireless has made available its platform – EMETRICS – to the MNOs, their MSPs and the NCC.

It is a national platform for evaluation and enhancement of the quality of mobile networks in Nigeria.  The platform which costs about N11 million (eleven million nairas) per year to subscribe will allow NCC, for instance, to verify the claims made by MNOs.

It will further allow MNOs to verify the claims made by their vendors such as Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei, ZTE and others.

The emetrics allows the vendors to provide much higher network quality to the public from RF signal perspective. The very nature of our beloved country makes this necessary.

“”In other word, this is a platform that allows indigenous peoples and enterprises of Nigeria to enjoy the benefits of having the best networks possible when MNOs and their MSPs voluntarily provide visibility into the quality of their networks instead of having us take at face value their words or even those of our government”, the company said.

The first deployment of LTE in Nigeria was in 2014 by Smile Telecom in Ibadan.

By 2016, Ntel, Bitflux and Smile had initiated efforts to deploy LTE in Lagos. Shortly after, the major national MNOs joined the effort.

By 2018, all of the four major network operators had LTE footprint in substantial parts of the country. This year has only seen increased 4G LTE coverage in Nigeria.

During the fourth quarter of this year, MTN began offering commercial 5G service using, primarily, its own routers.

“Unfortunately, unlike 2G and 3G networks, the regulatory body, NCC, has not established KPIs for monitoring the quality of the 4G networks or documented significant efforts made to encourage ongoing maintenance of high quality for these networks”, Enextgen Wireless Limited lamented in this report.

“The impact of efforts being made to minimize vandalism and improve the quality of public infrastructure can only be appreciated through ongoing monitoring. This is important because mobile broadband is indispensable to a vast majority of small enterprises and ordinary residents of the country.

“We have been carrying on the responsibility of monitoring these networks since 2016. We have evolved our process to where we now have a unique platform for not only monitoring the networks but also facilitating the efforts of interested network operators to maintain the best networks possible, a unique asset not available to other network operators in other countries”.

The 2022 4G LTE Spectrum Utilization Efficiency by MTN, Glo, Airtel and 9Mobile report focuses on benchmarking the quality of 4G LTE networks in Lagos and Ibadan – cities where Enextgen Wireless engineers have most consistently collected data in all four major networks.

“However, we have data in substantial parts of the country on MTN and one or two other networks, including data from some of the remote areas”.

The report available to TechEconomy uses data from the company’s Enterprise EMETRICS, which is available, by subscription, to interested MNOs, to rank the four network operators according to the quality of 4G LTE signal and packet delays:

Overview:

In the following pages, Enextgen Wireless ranked the quality of mobile RF signal used to provide 4G LTE services by the four major network operators in Lagos and Ibadan

“We base the rankings for EMETRICS according to the ratio of (green + blue + yellow) METRICS bins to (green + blue + yellow) RSRP bins.

“We base the ranking for Latency on the ratio of (green + blue + yellow) Latency bins to the overall latency bins (green, blue, yellow, brown, red)”, the report reads.

In each case, the one with the highest quotient ranks the highest:

Following the development, the company is set to cover major cities in Nigeria and Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State, is one among the first cities where the 5G Network has been deployed.

Others are; Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Kano, Owerri, and Maiduguri, which started testing the next-generation network infrastructure.

Customers with certain enabled devices will be allowed to connect with and try out the new service where coverage is available.

Enextgen Wireless Limited, an engineering company that focuses on improving user experience on Mobile Broadband Wireless Communications went to town (Ibadan) in ‘search’ of 5G.

The engineers, according to a report available to TechEconomy.ng, said they were looking to characterize the new MTN 5G network.

“Our 5G UEs are not yet included among supported devices; Samsung S21 SM-G991U1 and Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G. We do not know the exact locations of 5G cell sites. We purchased MTN’s 5G Routers. Our current tests are on those routers. We have not connected any external antennas to the routers and we don’t fully understand the logic behind delivering the routers without some type of antennas”.

“We would connect the 5G Routers to external antennas and re-evaluate”. [You can view reports from public EMETRICS website here].

The reports are separated into 4G and 5G once the 5G devices are added to the supported list.

“We should be beyond being some sort of Banana Republic where the service provider, not the experience of the customer or an independent evaluation tells customers the type or quality of service they are receiving.

“We believe that independent verification of MNO’s claims is essential to the development of mobile broadband services”.

Enextgen Wireless’ discoveries during the engineers’ search for 5G in Ibadan:

5G Throughput results from SPEEDTEST

The test was conducted within Enextgen Wireless Cocoa House office in Ibadan.

Meanwhile, the engineers said “No external antennas were connected while the signal indicator showed 5G”

“We have included this area in the following evaluated route”.

 4G LTE RS SINR along evaluated route

5G UE (Samsung S20) ran Enextlog – the logging and data generation application.

They used MTN 5G Router for data transfers; MTN 5G Router for ping packets; Enextlog was in 4G LTE the entire route.

“The 5G UE is not among the list of UEs currently supported by the MNO. RF measurements were for 4G LTE; and throughput and latency measurements were for the 5G Router.

MTN 5G Router Downlink Throughput along evaluated route

• The throughput reports are from the new MTN 5G Router.
• They would be 5G throughput when the router was connected to 5G network but 4G throughput otherwise.
• The router showed 5G coverage along some sections of the route.

Temporal plot of downlink throughput along the evaluated route

Distribution of downlink throughput along the evaluated route

EMETRICS throughput report for some bins along the covered route

The team deployed their 5G devices to collect log, “we will separate throughput by RAN type –  5G or 4G. The important thing to note is that reports of signal quality, packet latency and throughput are available for the public to see for free.

“We cover the cost of signal quality and packet latency, and occasionally, throughput reports.

“When MNOs make their throughput data available that report also becomes widely available.

Image: Sample geographical bins of MTN 5G Router Downlink Throughput along evaluated route

Concluding remarks:

We have heard about the many impressive things 5G makes possible. Now that there is some 5G coverage in Nigeria, we believe it is time to start paying more attention to what the deployment of that 5G makes possible than the abstract concept of what 5G, in general, makes possible.

The Enextgen Wireless team put it this way:

“4G LTE has not fared very well in places such as Yaba. 4G has been great only to the extent that only the self-adulation of the MNOs matters. Our experience is that the MNOs have not made much effort to deploy 4G LTE of high quality.

“We are hopeful that 100 MHz contiguous spectrum for deploying a mobile broadband network would make a difference. At this stage, we see this spectrum allocation, not 5G perse, as the real source of hope.  The fact that 5G makes it possible to use that spectrum more effectively is a major benefit.  However, the effective use of that spectrum is what ordinary Nigerians are likely to benefit from.

“The focus of mobile network deployment in the country seems to have been on monitoring the quality of 2G/3G while deploying  4G, as if to avoid addressing the poor quality of the deployed 4G. We are now touting abstract qualities of 5G as if we had fully deployed 4G, optimized its deployment and outlived its usefulness.

“The 100 MHz spectrum allocation for 5G should make a difference. Our fear is that our MNOs will find a way of giving us poor 5G quality by shifting the discussion to the esoteric services that 5G make possible at the expense of addressing the basic deployment quality necessary to provide good mobile broadband experience”.

What was the experience like? Well, let’s see how Enextgen’s Wireless’ 4G LTE RF quality analysis of Lagos to Enugu in May 31, 2022 will help us understand better why the quality of connectivity fluctuates.

In the report available to TechEconomy.ng, a team of engineers from Enextgen Wireless collected UE log between Lagos and Enugu and found that most cities and towns along the route have LTE coverage.

“Using our PREMETRICS, we identified the coverage quality ranking of bins with very high RF coverage (no less than -80 dBm). Those bins have a rating of Excellent (Green) in our RF coverage (RSRP) ranking.

“Ideally, they would also have a rating of Excellent (Green) in our RF Quality ranking. Any of the bins with lower than Green rating can use additional RF optimization.

“The amount of effort expended is for the MNO to decide

“PREMETRICS makes the available choices clear. Bins with Yellow and Saddle Brown (Fair and Usable) ratings show worse RF quality than the signal strength allows

“This demonstrates how the platform can be used to prioritize areas to focus on for immediate action.

“The coverage quality in Calabar, though not awful, could be improved as it contains a lot of Yellow and Saddle Brown bins.

“The higher the quality, the higher the amount of data that can be pushed through every second and the higher the revenue opportunity for the service provider”, the company said.

UE experienced higher packet latencies when the it was in WCDMA instead of LTE

The UE spent more time in 4G LTE than 3G WCDMA along the route.

What is PREMETRICS?

Enextgen Wireless described PREMETRICS  as proprietary platform for collecting, analyzing and creating reports for measurements from qualified Android-based mobile devices.

TechEconomy.ng understands this can be used for:

• Relating Radio Frequency events to causes
  • Trending selected KPIs
  • Pre-launch RF coverage optimization
  • Ongoing RF coverage quality monitoring and enhancement
  • Profiling quality of 4G LTE coverage
  • Profiling throughput and latency

“These bins have very strong RF coverage. Our EMETRICS shows the quality of that coverage.

“As seen below, the quality of the RF coverage varies. It is primarily determined by the quality of the RF Optimization effort.

“The purpose of RF Optimization should be to bring RF signal quality more in line with the RF signal strength, in order to improve customer satisfaction, and revenue generation, through higher offered throughput that is made possible by increased RF quality. Ideally, the signal strength in each of these bins should lead to Excellent (green) Quality. Instead, the quality of some of the bins is as low as Useable (marginal or Saddle Brown)”.

“Average RSRP was not less than –80 dBm in any of these bins. In other words, RF coverage was excellent in all of the bins.

“As such, EMETRICS ranking for the bins should also be Excellent (green). That none of them is green is an indication of a need for additional RF quality improvement. High RF quality results in additional revenue and increased customer satisfaction.

“The decision to make additional RF Optimization efforts may be guided by the MNO’s classification of the importance of the area to its bottom line.

“However, reduction in the number of Fair or Usable bins should come with the most basic level of RF Optimization.

Platform for LTE and 5G RF quality measurement, reporting and enhancement

Enextlog is a unique, low-cost tool for reporting measurements needed by our platform (PREMETRICS) for analyzing the quality of LTE and 5G networks

N100,00 (100 thousand naira) for installation on up to 10 devices.

Reports from logged measurements are available here (for public view) and there (for MNO subscriber view).

Uses for Enextlog:

• As probes at key customer locations
  • Logging RF measurements for RF optimization
  • Benchmarking against competitors
  • Resolving customer complaints
  • Monitoring impacts of network configuration changes.
  • Verifying the quality of cell site installations and antenna cabling.
  • Accepting individual cell sites, clusters of cell sites and entire market based on agreed-upon quality criteria.
  • Making network quality visible as a way to encourage continued quality improvement. It is difficult to improve what is not measured.