South African mobile data network operator rain, which recently launched its intelligent 5G transport network, continues to invest in its 5G network across the country, said investors African Rainbow Capital (ARC).
In an investment update published on Thursday, ARC said: “Overall, the growth prospects for Rain remain optimistic.”
The company said Rain’s revenue growth has been encouraging and significant progress was being made to further improve on network performance and stability.
“Rain is well-positioned to become a major player in the 5G data market,” said ARC.
ARC added that during October 2019, Rain launched the country’s first 5G network for fixed wireless internet connectivity. Since then Rain has expanded its 5G network to over 300 live 5G sites.
5G promises to be much faster than the current fourth-generation 4G and LTE (Long-Term Evolution) networks, meaning that users should be able to download files, transfer data and browse the internet at much faster speeds than what telco services are capable of now.
An industry intelligence report by BIS Research titled “Global 5G Infrastructure Market – Analysis and Forecast, 2019-2025” sees the global 5G-infrastructure market growing by more than $42 billion by 2025.
Rain, partly owned by Patrice Motsepe, Paul Harris and Michael Jordaan, is taking on established players such as Vox, Vumatel and Telkom’s OpenServe in the lucrative broadband space.
African Rainbow Capital also revealed that Rain’s network is expanding according to plan to achieve nationwide connectivity and improve on network quality.
Rain currently has over 3 000 active LTE sites.
Rain has a significant Business to Business (B2B) division and intends to build a dedicated national Long-Term Evolution (LTE) advanced network that will eventually facilitate an environment where open access to the internet becomes a reality in South Africa, with the best possible quality and internet speed, at affordable rates.
