South African fixed-wireless connectivity and private network operator Comsol has entered the home broadband market as a wholesale provider of 5G infrastructure, creating a new option for service providers.

The move provides South African Internet service providers (ISPs), mobile virtual network operators and other potential partners with access to a standalone 5G-Advanced network purpose-built for fixed wireless access (FWA).

Comsol has been building the 5G network over the past six months, and already covers more than one-million households in Gauteng, with ambitions of having about 2 000 base stations, representing one of the country’s largest standards-based and highest-capacity 5G networks.

The company is targeting full coverage of Gauteng by March 2027, with expansion into the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and major regional centres to follow in 2027 and 2028.

“We see 5G-Advanced for the home as a big growth opportunity,” Comsol founder and CEO Iain Stevenson says.

Comsol owns and operates the network as an end-to-end wholesale product, while its partners control the customer relationship and go-to-market strategy, including branding, commercials and support.

“Comsol anticipates where the market is heading and builds ahead of demand. This is why we were investing in licensed spectrum years before its strategic value was widely understood and building private 5G before the market had grasped what it would enable,” says Stevenson.

Comsol received its C-band spectrum licence from the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) in 2022, providing investors with the certainty to fund the network rollout. The allocated spectrum supports speed-tiered plans with competitive pricing for consumers.

“Icasa has allocated spectrum to network providers to expand broadband access and increase competition in the market. We believe the way to honour that mandate is to build wholesale infrastructure that extends high-speed broadband to new customer segments and creates a platform for more competition at the well-established service provider layer.”

Comsol’s wholesale 5G-Advanced offering complements existing fibre networks, expanding consumer choice and the reach of home connectivity.

The company pointed out that about 15% of South African households are connected to fibre, largely concentrated in dense metropolitan areas where trenching costs are justified.

“This leaves a significant market adjacent to suburban markets where 5G FWA can be deployed quickly and at a substantially lower cost. The 5G-Advanced FWA network deployed by Comsol provides high capacity to support home broadband at scale, enabling entire towns to be covered in weeks.”

Meanwhile, declining 5G chipset and CPE costs have lowered the upfront cost for consumers and ISPs entering the 5G FWA market, and, as a new entrant into the 5G wholesale market, Comsol also benefits from a modern 5G-Advanced standalone core, unencumbered by legacy technologies.

These advantages of 5G FWA are expected to drive significant growth over the next five years.

The company cited Icasa data that shows FWA subscriptions growing by about 39% year-on-year in 2025, as well as BMIT predictions that 5G may account for up to 67% of all residential FWA connections by 2029, up from 35% in 2024.

Comsol’s network is purpose- built to deliver high-capacity 5G home connectivity at scale, and is one of only two production 5G standalone cores currently live in South Africa.

The network offers a level of ultra-low latency and dedicated capacity control that hybrid 4G/5G deployments cannot match, along with about double the uplink performance of typical 5G mobile operator networks.

Comsol said it operates as a wholesaler and does not compete with its consumer-facing partners, with ISPs and other partners retaining ownership of their go-to-market strategies, including product commercials, packaging, billing and branding.

“Comsol’s API-driven platform enables partners to bring a branded 5G-Advanced FWA offering to market in weeks, while retaining a high degree of control over their products and customer engagement,” he highlighted.

Further, Comsol designed its network to enable ISPs to reach new customer segments with connectivity geared towards streaming, video calls and smart-home use that make up the bulk of home broadband needs.

Its API-driven architecture gives partners the flexibility to build differentiated packages for different customer segments and implement or adapt products within hours, enabling them to respond quickly to changing market demand.

The launch of the network is backed by two new shareholders: Platform Investment Partners and Wimsey Capital.

Convergence Partners, a major shareholder and long-standing investor in the business, together with Solcon Capital, is investing additional growth capital, while Stevenson, through Mactavish Investments, retains his stake and is also investing additional capital into the company.