The company Comsol is developing its own national 5G network for consumers that operates without using a 4G backbone network. This network is built on a single, unfragmented block of frequency spectrum, and Comsol plans to sell every megabit of this spectrum through other companies' brands.
Currently, the company has about 450 active coverage points serving approximately one million households in Göttingen. The launch of the first internet provider on this network is scheduled for September. Furthermore, the network operates on a continuous 60 MHz block in the 3.7 GHz band, using one channel across the entire coverage area. Comsol emphasizes the technical advantage of this approach: because the spectrum block is not divided, the need for carrier aggregation is eliminated, which avoids performance losses and additional costs for both end-user equipment and the radio network.
Comsol was one of five operators granted access to this band by Icasa and holds the sole exclusive national distribution among them. Additionally, the company possesses 336 MHz of continuous millimeter-wave spectrum at 28 GHz—an asset used in a pilot project with Samsung on Vilakazi Street in 2018. This spectrum is intended for subsequent coverage enhancement in high-demand areas and will also be allocated in large channel blocks rather than being aggregated.
Absence of 4G Backbone Network
Comsol utilizes a 5G Standalone core architecture instead of integrating 5G over an existing 4G core in Non-Standalone mode. According to the company, this ensures lower latency, increased reliability, higher device density, and access to network slicing. Customer equipment does not require connection to the 4G network, and the 3.7 GHz band is not used for transmitting legacy traffic.
Comsol states that its design provides approximately twice the uplink capacity compared to a typical fixed wireless broadband service from a mobile operator that combines 5G and 4G operation. On the radio side, Comsol has implemented Massive MIMO base stations with a 64T64R configuration (64 transmit and 64 receive elements), while the radio and core support a set of functions corresponding to the 5G-Advanced standard, which is the industry term for 3GPP Release 18 and its successor Release 19.
ZTE is the strategic supplier. Comsol chose the Chinese supplier after conducting a proof of concept and evaluation that covered 5G performance, R&D capabilities, expertise in C-band Massive MIMO and millimeter waves, as well as strategic alignment backed by the scale of resources promised by ZTE.
For data transport, Comsol has deployed routing segmentation over IPv6, or SRv6, which the company believes is likely the second full implementation of SRv6 in South Africa. The reason lies in the specific operation: the company manages multiple 5G cores and requires source control regarding how traffic moves between base stations and the corresponding core.
The network also operates using native dual-stack IPv4 and IPv6, rather than through translation or tunneling. Comsol claims that this places it among the first 5G operators in South Africa to do so. The argument is that this avoids layers of protocol translation and costly restructuring when the industry transitions to IPv6.
How the Wholesale Sales Model Works
Comsol will not sell services directly to end consumers. Instead, internet service providers, virtual mobile network operators, and other partners purchase capacity wholesale, while they themselves determine all customer-facing aspects: pricing, service packages, billing, branding, and customer acquisition.
This applies to the issue of unlimited services. Comsol does not dictate product structures; partners independently define their packages, price points, and target segments, which Comsol then implements. Different partners are expected to offer different products.
The company notes that its API-managed core reduces the onboarding time for internet service providers from the five-to-six months typical of established wholesale relationships to approximately eight weeks. Partners gain API-level access to develop and adapt products, rather than working according to predefined templates.
Two statements by the company can be interpreted as criticism of existing wholesalers. Since Comsol has no retail division, it states that it will never prioritize its own traffic over partner traffic. Furthermore, it will not require a partner to cease sales to protect network bandwidth, but instead will manage congestion by increasing capacity in high-demand areas.
Since the services are not tied to a single base station, as is common in mobile operator fixed wireless products, users can move the router between coverage areas. Physical throughput currently reaches just under 1 Gbps in ideal conditions. CEO Iain Stevenson reported that his own internal block operates at speeds exceeding 500 Mbps without limitations, although he does not expect every internet service provider to sell services at such a speed.
What Are the Future Plans
Comsol aims to provide national coverage for millions of households by the end of 2028, expanding its reach to the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, and regional centers. The market potential is based on BMIT forecasts, which predict that by 2029, the fixed wireless access market in South Africa will reach a size of 82.8 billion Rand, with 5G accounting for 67% of fixed wireless residential connections, up from 35% in 2024. Currently, about 15% of South African households are connected via fiber optic after more than ten years of deployment, with these connections concentrated in metropolitan areas where the cost of laying cable can be recouped.
In the long term, Comsol intends to merge this network with the enterprise network it has operated since 2016 into a single SRv6-based backbone channel. Ultimately, the company plans to transition corporate clients from proprietary radio equipment to standards-compliant 5G equipment. Corporate services will retain their Service Level Agreements (SLAs), static IP addressing, and Layer 2 delivery; consumer products will remain best-effort offerings. Specific timelines have not been set.
