Rain has launched its first commercial Standalone 5G network in the country, believed to be the first in Africa and one of just a handful around the world.
Rain’s Standalone 5G, based on Huawei equipment, is currently available in Cape Town, covering areas including Sea Point in Cape Town, Claremont, Goodwood, Bellville, Durbanville, and Cape Town City Centre.
The network is built on Rain’s own sites, so it can enhance customers’ fixed wireless broadband (FWA) service experience in the covered areas.
“Standalone 5G will further improve 5G network performance with increased uplink rate, lower latency, and improved reliability, ushering in high-end cloud VR and cloud gaming services, more diversified enterprise and home broadband services,” says Rain’s chief marketing officer, Khaya Dlanga.
Standalone 5G supports advanced network-slicing functions and mobile edge computing (MEC), allowing Rain to explore new ideas and customised services based on ultra-low latency and much higher capacity, realised by Huawei’s Converged Core Solution and Massive MIMO technologies.
“Standalone 5G will demonstrate how 5G is powerful in realising South Africa’s 4IR future. Powered by Huawei’s 5G solutions, our Standalone 5G will enable the industries digital transformation in the future, such as smart healthcare, smart ports, smart mining and smart manufacturing in South Africa,” says Dlanga. “We will work with the trustworthy strategic partner to further expand our 5G networks and bring the best service and experience to our customers.”