Nokia and Vodacom have signed an agreement under which the companies will trial Nokia 5G technology to enable Vodacom to drive digitalization for the benefit of businesses and individuals in South Africa.

Working with Vodacom in a series of workshops and trials, Nokia will share its latest 5G evolutions including massive MIMO Adaptive Antennas, AirScale Radio Access, AirGile Cloud-native Core, Multi-Access Edge Computing, and end-to-end Mobile Anyhaul transport networks to test how they can be used to meet ever-changing demand in the country.

Initially, the companies will focus on the delivery of Ultra-HD and virtual reality video services, leveraging the enhanced mobile broadband and ultra-low latency capabilities of 5G. Vodacom and Nokia will also collaborate to understand how 5G can drive continued economic growth in vertical industries important to South Africa including manufacturing, mining, healthcare, media, energy, and transportation.

Nokia will leverage expertise from its Bell Labs Consulting arm to work with Vodacom and identify where, when and how to evolve its network to 5G.

Africa is in the middle of a mobile connectivity boom, and as such, operator expects 5G to deliver faster internet speeds to our almost 70 million customers across the Group.