Huawei and rain launches Africa’s first Standalone 5G network

On July 19, South Africa’s data-only mobile network, rain, launched its first standalone 5G (SA 5G) network in the country. The network is supported by Huawei equipment and is the first commercial standalone 5G network in entire Africa.

rain’s Standalone 5G is currently available in Cape Town covering areas including Sea Point in Cape Town, Claremont, Goodwood, Bellville, Durbanville, and Cape Town City Centre.

This new SA 5G network is built on rain’s own sites and allows rain to enhance its fixed wireless broadband (FWA) service experience in the covered areas.

“Standalone 5G will further improve 5G network performance with increased the uplink rate, lower latency, and improved reliability, ushering in high-end cloud VR and cloud gaming services, more diversified enterprise and home broadband services, ” said rain Chief Marketing Officer Khaya Dlanga.

5G

Standalone 5G is the finest form of this latest network technology and supports advanced network-slicing features and mobile edge computing (MEC). This allows for rain to enhance and customize service based on ultra-low latency and much higher capacity with SA 5G, realized by Huawei’s Converged Core Solution and Massive MIMO technologies.

“SA 5G will demonstrate how 5G is powerful in realizing South Africa’s 4IR future. Powered by Huawei’s world’s leading 5G solutions, our SA 5G will enable the industries ‘digital transformation in the future, such as smart healthcare, smart ports, smart mining, and smart manufacturing in South Africa. We will work with the trustworthy strategic partner to further expand our 5G networks and bring the best service and experience to our customers,” Khaya added.