Wireless infrastructure provider, Comsol Networks and Samsung South Africa demonstrated a live 5G pilot network in Soweto on Friday (7 September).<\/p>\n
According to Comsol, it has access to the largest tranche of contiguous 28GHz in South Africa, making it the local front-runner for 5G services.<\/p>\n
Because of this, Samsung South Africa is now looking to expand into the 5G network industry in partnership with Comsol in country.<\/p>\n
The pilot network was officially switched on Friday morning at an event in Soweto, demonstrating 1.75 gigabit per second download speeds.<\/p>\n
Comsol CEO Iain Stevenson\u00a0said that the intention is to launch commercial 5G services to businesses and consumers in certain areas before the end of 2019.<\/p>\n
The Soweto pilot network draws on the combined strengths of a number of global and local players – Samsung\u2019s 5G solutions, Dark Fibre Africa providing fibre backhaul and MWeb as the ISP, Stevenson said.<\/p>\n
“While 5G broadly defines the forthcoming evolution of mobile networks over a wide range of frequencies, this specific pilot network is 5G Fixed Wireless Access (5G-FWA),” he said.<\/p>\n
“5G-FWA uses the kind of network technology that will come to be associated with the 5G era \u2013 the likes of beamforming and a high-frequency millimetre wave spectrum such as 28GHz \u2013 to provide an exponential performance boost to wireless broadband services.”<\/p>\n
According to Comsol, FWA will deliver high-quality, high-speed bandwidth services and low latency to complement existing fibre deployments.<\/p>\n