Veon to focus on 4G connections for next three years, no 5G plans

Dutch telecommunications company, Veon, plans to focus on 4G deployment for the following three years before diving into the 5G market, its chief executive said on Wednesday. The game plan is a stark contrast to the strategies being adopted by other telecom operators that were gathered at the Mobile World Congress.

A significant majority of the operators who spoke at the annual industry event held in Barcelona showcased their plans to launch 5G networks. Tech companies like Orange, Verizon, and Deutsche Telekom went further to glamorize their latest experiments with robots and edge computing.

Meanwhile, Veon, a service provider to 240 million users across countries ranging from Pakistan, Algeria, and Russia, focused on a different narrative to cater to its low-income, mostly daily wage-earning customer base.

“There is really a need to make sure that smartphone penetration gets to the right levels faster, that 4G accessibility gets to the right levels,” CEO Kaan Terzioglu told Reuters on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress.

“I don’t like the vanity of 5G being discussed before we get the basic things done.”

“I don’t expect 5G deployments in our markets commercially over the next three years… though we will make deployments for fixed wireless access and private networks,” Terzioglu said, adding that fewer than half of his customers had 4G coverage.

Socio-economic equality was further intensified by the sudden shift to the online medium due to the pandemic, resulting in the increase of extreme poverty by 7%, Terzioglu said, a repeat of the narrative proposed by other telecom executives who pledged to fight the digital divide.

“The only way to address that is to ensure equal access to 4G and fiber in homes, otherwise the gap will even get worse.”