Comsol Sees big Opportunity in Private 5G in South Africa

Comsol Networks, a telecommunications company 40% owned by Andile Ngcaba’s Convergence Partners and 25% by Nedbank Private Equity, is using its access to prime radio frequency spectrum bands to build private 5G networks for enterprise customers – and the company sees this as a lucrative and growing opportunity in telecoms in South Africa.

Unlike MTN, Vodacom, Rain and Telkom, which are building 5G networks for both businesses and consumers, Comsol’s 5G deployments – in mines and manufacturing enterprises, for example – are for private commercial use.

In an interview with TechCentral today, Comsol CEO Iain Stevenson said the company, which spent several years building an enterprise-focused fixed-wireless access (FWA) network using 336MHz of bandwidth in so-called millimetre-wave spectrum at 28GHz, has also begun deploying private networks for enterprises in the 3.7GHz band. Comsol secured access to 60MHz at 3.7GHz in 2021 from communications regulator Icasa, along with four other small telecoms operators, a move that drew some criticism of the regulator.

Although Comsol is engaged in projects with big mining and manufacturing firms, Stevenson said the company is also seeing growing demand from smaller towns and more rural areas around South Africa