A major challenge lies in the sharing of infrastructures between operators, the necessary investments being colossal, worries Challenge . Qatar spent $20 billion on its telecoms infrastructure during the last World Cup, giving an idea of the scale of the task. The National Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (ANRT) is now under pressure to launch the 5G call for tenders. Discussions are underway with sector giants such as Huawei, Nokia and Ericsson, as well as with Moroccan operators.
The emergency is real. The specifications of the World Cup require the acceleration of numerous projects, including the allocation of 5G licenses, from this year. Hicham Chiguer, president of the Association of Users of Information Systems in Morocco (AUSIM), estimates that 5G will appear in the kingdom in 2025. Morocco could then become the first African country to adopt this technology.
Read: Internet and 5G: Morocco wants to catch up
5G promises speeds up to ten times higher than 4G, reducing, for example, the time to download a high-definition film to just 20 minutes. Beyond speed, it is its ability to manage massive volumes of data that marks a breakthrough. 5G is presented as the key technology for the Internet of Things, a world where connected equipment interacts without human intervention.
However, the deployment of 5G is dependent on the generalization of optical fiber, which is still limited in Morocco. A delay involving in particular a regulatory framework considered too rigid.
The telecommunications law did not anticipate the arrival of infrastructure operators. “This rigid framework prevents the sharing and pooling of these infrastructures,” explains Challenge. Public players like ONCF, ONEE and ADM have under-exploited optical fiber networks which they cannot market to other operators. The ONCF, for example, has a network of 2,700 km of optical fiber, 70% of which remains unused.
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