Ericsson has signed a reseller agreement with South African service provider Comsol to provide the Ericsson Private 5G solution; this will enable Comsol to expand its enterprise business within South Africa’s mining industry.
Comsol, which describes itself as a leading provider of guaranteed, dedicated and high-speed, last-mile connectivity and private networks, will receive the right to resell the high-speed wireless networking solution to customers across South Africa’s mining industry.
With Ericsson’s high-end connectivity solution and Comsol’s expertise in mining and systems integration, this collaboration is set to help the nation’s mining industry improve worker safety, increase operational efficiency, and realize its sustainability goals.
Ericsson Private 5G is Ericsson’s next-generation private network solution providing secure and reliable 4G and 5G connectivity through its single server dual mode core. Built for business operations, the solution comes pre-integrated to ensure rapid time to use and turning on advanced and intelligent operations in any environment.
Helping the mining industry gain robust 4G/LTE and 5G standalone (SA) connectivity, the solution will also help Comsol’s customers optimize and simplify business operations through data creation, collection, and analysis. This solution will enable Comsol to provide reliable and secure communication while connecting people, industrial sites and devices.
Ericsson has successfully delivered a proof of concept (PoC) implementing the Ericsson Private 5G solution as a pre-packaged standalone implementation of the Ericsson Dual Mode Core, which supports end-to-end cellular data-only services focusing primarily on enterprise applications.
The Ericsson Private 5G solution enables 5G standalone (SA) connectivity with a low carbon footprint and low lead time. Comsol will utilize the PoC solution to experiment and test various use cases for mining and other industries, including augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, and fixed wireless access.
Private 5G rollout seems to be something of a trend in South Africa lately. Among recent announcements, we reported late last year that operator MTN plans to build private 5G networks for mines and ports.
