Feasibility and Challenges of 5G Network Deployment in Least Developed Countries (LDC)

Abstract

Growing client population, ever-increasing service demand, and complexity of services are the driving factors for the mobile operators for a paradigm shift in their core technology and radio access networks. 5G mobile network is the result of this paradigm shift and currently under deployment in many developed countries such as United States, United Kingdom, South Korea, Japan, and China-to name a few. However, most of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) have very recently been implemented 4G mobile networks for which the overall role out phase is still not complete. In this paper, we investigate how feasible it is for LDCs to emphasize on a possible deployment of 5G networks at the moment. At first, we take a holistic approach to show the major technical challenges LDCs are likely to face while deploying the 5G mobile networks. Then we argue that various security aspects of 5G networks are an ongoing issue and LDCs are not technologically competent to handle many security glitches of 5G networks. At the same time, we show that most of the use cases of 5G networks are not applicable in the context of many LDCs (at least at the present time). Finally, this paper concludes that the start of the 5G network deployment in LDCs would take much longer time than expected.

Understanding the challenges of 5G deployment in India

“…Our findings are in line with those of Rahman et al (2021), who also opined that the nonapplicability of most of the Western 5G use cases in the context of least developed countries is a challenge for 5G deployment.…”

“…Previous studies have also indicated that a huge number of connected devices in 5G networks increases the number of entry points for hackers to perform unauthorized operations (Rahman et al , 2021), which is a key security concern for telecom operators in the deployment of 5G.…”

“…Some of the existing studies indicate that the workforce in developing countries is not yet ready for 5G deployment. For example, Rahman et al (2021) highlighted that well-trained experts are required to handle the deployment challenges of 5G, but there is a large void in their number, especially in the least developed countries.…”

“…Within the context of developing countries, high spectrum cost is found to be a major barrier to 5G implementation (Rahman et al , 2021; Agubor et al , 2021; Indoria, 2020; Agubor et al , 2021) highlighted that spectrum pricing in Nigeria is three times higher than that in developed countries. This is one of the major barriers to 5G deployment in the country (Agubor et al , 2021).…”

Strategies For 5g Nr Networks Distribution In Rwanda

“…Despite the features and huge benefits, there are still potential challenges to implement 5G especially in Rwanda. Here below are some of them [5].…”