During the Mobile World Congress being held in Barcelona, South African operator Rain announced the launch of the 5G in South Africa as of September 2019. The operators indicated that in that regard, it would collaborate with Huawei, which will offer its technical expertise to Zain and provide adequate 5G compatible devices to clients.

Willem Roos (photo, left), CEO of Rain Group (photo, gauche), explains that "the network will provide fibre-like speeds without installation complexities, time delays and cost of laying fibre in underserviced areas."  “Rain is very optimistic about the business prospects of South Africa’s 5G network and will continue to invest more in 5G networks and better serve users,” he indicated.

According to the manager, in due time, Rain will roll-out the 5G infrastructure to cover Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.  

Jacqueline Shi (photo, right), president of the Huawei cloud core network product line, explained that the 5G network that would be rolled out with Rain in South Africa is the first important step in the partnership between Huawei and Rain.  “With our solutions, we are committed to working with operators to build future-oriented networks that will give them the maximum value from their investment and give their customers the best user experience," she said.

This is not the first time Rain is announcing the commercial roll-out of the 5G in South Africa. The first date announced by Paul Harris, its president, during the investment forum held in Johannesburg on October 25-27, 2018, was November 12, 2018.