Comsol, which positions itself as the leading provider of fixed wireless access (FWA) last mile connectivity and private networks in South Africa, has launched a 5G FWA network to meet the need for business-class broadband for SMEs, and a cost-effective, reliable redundancy option for enterprises.
Iain Stevenson, Chief Executive Officer at Comsol, says its new 5G FWA offering complements Comsol’s existing FWA portfolio of broadband products.
“Our wholesale partners and market trends indicated that there was a significant gap in the market for a low-cost, reliable, business-class broadband. Building on nearly 30 years of experience focusing exclusively on business connectivity, we have spent the past five years refining a 5G offering that would both be commercially viable and meet local business needs,” he says.
“Our new 5G FWA solution is the result of extensive testing and research, and marks a major milestone for the company. We have been around for a long time, empowering the country’s biggest ISPs, ICT firms and businesses with connectivity. Now we can cater for a portion of the market we were not able to cater for in the past.”
Stevenson adds: “The enterprise-grade product has been designed to offer low contention throughput, so effectively we are guaranteeing the data rate delivered to an organisation. This is coupled with reliable power infrastructure and dual fibre feeds to drive mission-critical applications." The Comsol 5G FWA product is uncapped and available in 25Mbps, 50Mbps and 100Mbps.
Stevenson explains that Comsol’s business-class 5G FWA product is markedly different from consumer-grade 5G. “We are bringing the latest technology in this space overlaid on business-grade telco infrastructure, power resilience and dual backhaul. We built our own 5G ecosystem from the core – the brains of the network, through to the radio access network and the end devices – the fixed CPEs. Ahead of the launch, we redesigned our whole network to cater for the increased power consumption of 5G. We also upgraded our power infrastructure to provide 24-hour autonomy on our base stations, ensuring that a customer's services don't go down during load-shedding.
“With Comsol’s 5G service, we are delivering something similar to our current enterprise product, at a lower price. We assure the uptime and availability businesses need – meaning availability of bandwidth, not just the link. From a radio frequency perspective, our 5G service uses outdoor CPEs instead of indoor routers that consumer services use. This delivers optimal performance, with uplink speeds multiple times better than you might find with a poorly positioned indoor router. We designed the entire network and infrastructure so customers get what they pay for,” Stevenson says.
The Comsol 5G service will initially launch in the Gauteng region, with coverage to be extended over the course of the next year. Comsol is currently selecting preferred wholesale partners who will work with resellers and installers to roll out the new product. Stevenson says the 5G FWA opportunity is available to partners who currently have SDN expertise, or who offer LTE to the SME market and wish to upgrade their offering.
Comsol will support the channel with APIs, apps, installation portals and training to ensure partners are able to install, maintain and have seamless interaction with the product.
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