Vodafone pledges mobile speeds of 1 gigabit per second by 2020

Malta will in the coming years have available mobile data speeds which will exceed 1Gb/s through the use of 5G technology which is currently being developed and tested. This was announced today in a Vodafone press conference, which was mirrored in all the company’s worldwide operations.

Vodafone Malta CEO Amanda Nelson said the company was “showing a glimpse into Malta of the future - a Gigabit society”.

The creation of a “Gigabit society” is one of the European Commission’s EU-wide targets. It proposes that by 2025 all schools, transport hubs and main providers of public services and digitally intensive enterprises should be equipped with internet connections with download/upload speeds of one gigabit of data per second.

Nelson said Vodafone was very excited about the future, now reflected in the company’s new tagline “The future is exciting. Ready?.”

In a recorded video message, parliamentary secretary for financial services Silvio Schembri said that the government had agreed to start the process to roll out 5G across Malta. He commended Vodafone for this initiative.

The new 5G technology is not expected to be made available before at least 2020, Vodafone said, as it is still in the laboratory testing phase. However it had launched a 4G+ service earlier this summer, and this would soon be available to more than 50% of Malta’s population The company said that 4G+ technology was 60% faster than traditional 4G, and Vodafone was the only mobile operator in Malta currently offering such speeds.

Cell site used to demonstrate 5G speeds

In a demonstration using a “cell site” which housed the 5G technology which is being lab tested, Vodafone claimed that a 3Gb film would take less than 30 seconds to download using 5G technology. The same film download would take almost an hour on 3G, but less than 2 minutes using the already available 4G+ service, it further claimed.