South African MTN pursues its ambition to boost connectivity across its main market. The company has partnered with Nokia to upgrade its telecom network towards 5G. Leveraging the Finnish group's 5G and cloud-native IMS infrastructure, MTN South Africa aims to expand its Voice over Broadband, Voice over WiFi, and Voice over LTE (VoLTE) services, offering users faster and more reliable connectivity experiences.

According to Giovanni Chiarelli (pictured), Chief Technology and Information Officer at MTN South Africa, “with Nokia cloud-native IMS, MTN has a strong path to 5G. This deployment allows us to provide customers the highest quality and fastest connectivity, including superior voice connectivity through VoLTE.”

MTN’s approach comes days after the Independent Communications Authority (Icasa) asked telecom operators to return the temporary telecom spectrum granted them during the Covid-19 crisis. These telecom resources enabled the operators to meet the growing demand for data capacity and launch 5G in various cities.

With a Nokia-enhanced telecom network capable of supporting 5G, MTN South Africa will have the opportunity to launch its ultra-broadband services in several other cities in the country. The telecom company will strengthen this offering after acquiring an adequate telecom spectrum, which Icasa plans to allocate in 2022.

Muriel Edjo