Comsol’s big 5G fixed wireless access plans

Comsol, a South African fixed wireless access last-mile connectivity and private networks provider, is planning a national rollout of its 5G network over the next twelve months.

This will be in addition to Comsol’s existing millimetre-wave fixed wireless access (FWA) network, chief commercial officer Gary Woolley told MyBroadband.

The company launched its 5G FWA service in March using 60MHz of radio frequency spectrum in the 3.7GHz band.

It is currently available in Gauteng’s business districts, with the product tiered in three different capacities: 25Mbps, 50Mbps, and 100Mbps.

“We have a significant chunk of spectrum which can drive larger capacities, however, at this stage, we are limiting our offering to 100Mbps,” Woolley said.

Speaking to What’s Next with Aki Anastasiou, Comsol CEO Iain Stevenson said their 5G FWA network will be exclusively focused on business use.

“There will be no consumers on the network. That means there’s going to be very low contention,” he said.

Stevenson also explained that they had invested heavily in power redundancy, allowing them to offer an “absolute” service-level agreement.

“Up to stage 8 load-shedding, the network will not go down [and] the backhaul is fully redundant,” he said.

According to Stevenson, Comsol deployed its own core, backhaul, and radio access network.

They also give 5G FWA customers a full professional installation at their site.

Stevenson said the product will be marketed through their channel, reducing costs.

He explained that they will work through selected partners with a lot of experience in the small-to-medium enterprise space.

He said there’s a massive market to be had with lower-priced FWA products.

“Effectively, we’re servicing 25,000 businesses, and by opening up a lower [average revenue per user] product, we’re going to [target] a further 400,000 customers,” Stevenson said.