The roadmap towards 5G in Iraq: Challenges, Opportunities, and Required Procedures

The deployment of the fourth generation of wireless cellular communications (namely 4G) is already underway in Iraq. And like the 2G and 3G, the current deployment is almost 13 years behind the rest of the world. This delay in acquiring the latest technologies is costing the country a lot of losses economically, scientifically, and in all aspects of life. The fifth generation of wireless communications (namely called 5G) was starting to be deployed in different parts of the world by the end of 2018. This new generation will include many challenges with respect to the major changes to the networks infrastructures, applications, and use cases. Such Dramatic Changes can take many years to complete the transition. This paper is aimed to answer the question of what the Government, the operator companies, the vendors, and the potential customers need to do in order to complete the transition from 4G to 5G with minimum effort, time, and change to the already existing infrastructure taking in consideration the real need and expected usage of the 5G services. Site surveys, questionnaires, online polls, and comparative study with similar examples were used to conduct this study and the findings and recommendations are listed accordingly.