Ericsson gets some 5G work from MTN South Africa

Swedish kit vendor Ericsson is helping out MTN South Africa with its 5G RAN, transport and core.

MTN expects to start rolling out its commercial 5G network sometime next year and has revealed that Ericsson will be one of the vendors heavily involved in the process. There’s no talk of exclusivity, however, so we can assume at least one other is mucking in, while complicating the picture further is MTN’s recent warm words about the OpenRAN project.

“South Africa is undergoing a huge digital transformation, which will open up new business opportunities and boost the nation’s economy,” said Giovanni Chiarelli, CTIO of MTN South Africa. “To enable and speed up this process, MTN, with Ericsson as our partner, is rapidly upgrading our network to deliver the quality, capacity, and overall network performance that our enterprise and customers demand. Launching 5G will accomplish this transformation and, with fixed wireless access, will ensure high quality, increased capacity, and greater reliability for our customers.”

“With this deal MTN South Africa will be one of the true 5G pioneers in Africa,” said Nicolas Blixell, VP of Ericsson Middle East and Africa. “We will work closely with them, just as we have done with other generations of technology, to bring the benefits of 5G to them and their customers. Citizens, enterprises, industry and society in general in South Africa are set to benefit enormously from 5G and we are here to help MTN South Africa make that happen.”

Ericsson now claims 76 commercial 5G agreements or contracts with unique operators, of which 30 are publicly announced and 23 are live. Here’s Ericsson’s latest 5G deal win map which, for some reason, doesn’t feature this one. Bit of an internal communications breakdown there it seems.