South Africa’s Comsol embarking on ‘5G' fixed-wireless trial

Johannesburg-based telco Comsol, which operates an open access fibre-optic network and Internet of Things (IoT) services, has revealed plans to run trials of ‘5G’ 28GHz fixed-wireless access technology. TechCentral reports that Comsol – backed by Nedbank, Industrial Development Corporation and Andile Ngcaba’s Convergence Partners – will launch a trial 28GHz network in partnership with ISPs next month with selected B2B customers, utilising ‘pre-release’ equipment at several sites in Gauteng. The company possesses 280MHz of licensed spectrum in the 28GHz band, which it says could enable it to proceed to a commercial ‘5G point-to-multipoint’ network rollout with the capability to deliver ‘1Gbps access speeds’. Trial coverage will be within about 2km of each base station. Comsol – which currently partners ISPs/telcos including Vox and Dimension Data’s Internet Solutions – indicated that if the tests prove successful, it would look at potentially building a network of national scope. CEO Iain Stevenson said: ‘We will do the trials, see the capabilities of the kit, and then do some financial modelling on what offerings we could provide the market. Based on that, we will decide where we will deploy the network.’