Within the next year, Rain plans to launch a mobile 5G product, according to Johan van Zyl, co-CEO of shareholder African Rainbow Capital (Arc). While its primary product offerings have always been fixed wireless internet, it wants to become a bigger player in the mobile internet market. It currently has a 4G mobile product, but will go full tilt with its new 5G mobile offering when it comes to market.
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“It’s really limited the mobile offering that we’ve had. It’s always been sort of supplementary, simply because we have the capacity for it.” Van Zyl said. “But we would really like to add to that and do 5G mobile as well. If you look at the terabytes that we’ve been moving into these fixed places, it’s been quite substantial.”
Rain will also be expanding its fixed wireless capabilities with the acquisition of new spectrum, that will become available relatively soon.
“We now have access to the spectrum and the best way for us to really start using the additional spectrum that we’ve acquired, although it is not available yet, is to add to our fixed [wireless], which is mainly 4G and 5G,” he said. “A big part of that is leveraging our existing network, but also getting roaming agreements in place with others.”
“We already have substantial market share in the fixed space. We had a bit of a run-up front where we didn’t have much competition regarding 5G. There are now several competitors, but we haven’t seen demand for our products decline,” he added.
