Currently, 5G is not a relevant technology for Azerbaijani market, because it is very new and possibilities for usage are very low on our market, Bakcell CEO Rainer Rathgeber told Report.
‘5G is not a relevant technology for mobile market and consumer market in particular, and will not be a relevant technology for the next years to come. This is a technology which only advantage is short signaling time, which is nowadays only useful for robotic plants and factories. There is a discussion about autonomous driving vehicles which is also very far away from today’s situation. But if we look at the technologies we are using today, mainly 2G, 3G and 4G, they are the main standard all over the world because of their best efficiency and quality. 5G today is a niche technology, complicated from the economic point of view, since no one in the consumer market really needs this kind of performance and it costs a lot. To use 5G, we would have to densify our network and use 3 times more towers than we use today to have 5G coverage, and no one would use it. Today on our network we have 4G speed performance which you cannot even exhaust with your regular smartphone. It would cost Azerbaijan tons of money, because the 5G equipment has to be purchased from China and Sweden, and since it is not relevant technology the customers simply won’t use it. We don’t want to invest to something that is not relevant and useful for our customers’, he said.
Mr. Rathgeber also mentioned that Bakcell will announce and launch the 099 prefix in the near future.