In a Surprise Move, Kenya’s Safaricom Suspends Its Huawei-Powered 5G Roll Out

SIMON MAINA / AFP

Kenya’s largest telecom operator, Safaricom, announced on Tuesday that it will suspend deployment of its new Huawei-powered fifth-generation (5G) mobile network. The news came as a surprise to many, given that the company has already completed testing and trials of the new network’s high-speed mobile connections. 

It was widely expected that Safaricom would make its 5G service available to customers by the end of 2020 or sometime in the first quarter of this year. Now, CEO Peter Ndegwa says the company will instead focus on converting millions of existing 2G and 3G customers to 4G service instead.

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by Eric Olander

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