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South African fixed wireless connectivity operator Comsol is entering the home broadband market as a wholesale provider of 5G infrastructure, backed by a new shareholder line-up that is funding a massive build-out of a purpose-built 5G-Advanced fixed wireless access (FWA) network.
Platform Investment Partners, which has made 10 founder-stage fibre investments across four geographies over the past decade, and Wimsey Capital, a privately held investment company, have joined the shareholder base as two new investors.
The new shareholding follows the exit of Nedbank Private Equity, part of Nedbank CIB, from its investment in Comsol. Convergence Partners, a long-standing shareholder, together with Solcon Capital, is putting in additional growth capital, while founder and CEO Iain Stevenson, through Mactavish Investments, retains his stake and is investing further capital of his own.
RMB arranged and provided the funding solution underpinning the shareholder transaction and will support Comsol’s capital expenditure roll-out plan.
“Comsol anticipates where the market is heading and builds ahead of demand. This is why we were investing in licensed spectrum years before its strategic value was widely understood and building private 5G before the market had grasped what it would enable. We see 5G-Advanced for the home as a big growth opportunity,” said Stevenson.
He added, “ICASA has allocated spectrum to network providers to expand broadband access and increase competition in the market. We believe the way to honour that mandate is to build wholesale infrastructure that extends high-speed broadband to new customer segments and creates a platform for more competition at the well-established service provider layer.”
Established in 1997, Comsol has operated in South African wireless connectivity for nearly three decades. It now gives internet service providers, mobile virtual network operators and other partners access to a standalone 5G-Advanced network purpose-built for FWA, owning and operating the network end-to-end while partners control branding, pricing and customer relationships.
The company says it began building the network six months ago and already covers more than a million households in Gauteng, with full provincial coverage targeted by March 2027 ahead of expansion into the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and other regional centres in 2027 and 2028, eventually reaching roughly 2,000 base stations nationwide.
“We have spent years investing in the construction of open-access digital infrastructure in South Africa, and were founding investors in assets such as DFA, Conduct, Vumatel and N99. Our approach has always been to identify trends in technology adoption and invest behind them. We see fixed wireless as an important part of the connectivity market,” said Shaun Clark, CEO of Platform Investment Partners.
“Comsol is a natural fit with our portfolio of digital infrastructure businesses, which are all centred around a neutral host model,” added Clark.
Comsol’s network is one of only two production 5G standalone cores currently live in South Africa, offering ultra-low latency and roughly double the uplink performance of typical mobile operator networks.
Only about 15% of South African households have fibre, mostly in dense metros, leaving a large adjacent market where 5G FWA can be deployed faster and more cheaply.
ICASA awarded Comsol its C-band spectrum licence in 2022, and falling 5G chipset and equipment costs have improved the economics for consumers and ISPs alike. Industry data cited in the release shows FWA subscriptions growing roughly 39% year-on-year in 2025, with 5G projected to account for up to 67% of residential FWA connections by 2029, up from 35% in 2024.
Andile Ngcaba, executive chairman of Convergence Partners and chairman of the Comsol board, said, “Comsol is well positioned as the world transitions from 5G to 6G. The depth of its spectrum and nationwide network presence across all provinces creates a significant opportunity to serve South Africa’s enterprise, private and public sectors. Comsol’s platform is equally relevant to urban and rural markets, and to companies of all sizes.”
