Roadmap and Challenges to the Deployment of 4g Lte Network: The Nigerian Experience

Abstract

Nokia, a leading equipment vendor, named Nigeria as a "priority country" in March 2014, when it announced it was expanding its presence with the opening of a new office in the country's largest city Lagos, and an overhaul of its existing office in capital city Abuja. [1]. Nigeria, therefore, present a huge market potential in the telecoms world. However, this potential has not been fully tapped as broadband penetration is abysmally low. Also, next generation technology is needed to drive the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, Smart Cities and various smart innovations technology can avail. [2]. This research looked at how these problems could be tackled through the deployment of 4G LTE. It was found that for the 4G LTE network to be successfully deployed across the whole of Nigeria, certain factors had to be addressed. Some of these factors include, spectrum challenge, challenges in the implementation of hard handover, inability to acquire 4G LTE enabled devices due to low-income base of users, inadequate number of base stations and problem integrating 4G equipment with existing legacy networks