South African telecoms company Comsol is planning to deploy a trial 5G network, in partnership with New York-headquartered Verizon Communications and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics.
The network is scheduled to be operational by the third quarter of 2018, Comsol CEO Iain Stevenson said. The trial, which will take place in Johannesburg, will consist of two ‘multi-sector’ base stations to start, connected to fibre-optic backhaul. Multiple demonstration points will be established where members of the public will be able to experience 5G, which will deliver gigabit-class Internet access. Though the trial network will be non-commercial, customers will be connected to it and will use it in real-world environments, Stevenson said.
The ‘point-to-multipoint’ network will utilise Comsol’s spectrum assignment in the 28GHz band and pre-5G proprietary standard from Verizon’s 5G Technical Forum, which will ultimately be converted into the 5G New Radio (NR) standards once they have been confirmed.