South African telecoms infrastructure firm Comsol has closed a major funding round. The company will use the money to build a new national 5G broadband network. Comsol targets full completion by the end of 2028.
Founder and CEO Iain Stevenson confirmed the deal. It combines fresh debt financing with new equity investment. Rand Merchant Bank, a division of FirstRand, provided the debt. Meanwhile, Platform Investment Partners and Wimsey Capital joined as new equity shareholders. Nedbank Private Equity has exited the business as part of the changes.
Stevenson and Convergence Partners reinvested to keep their stakes in the company. Convergence Partners is a pan-African private equity firm. Andile Ngcaba, a former South African telecoms policymaker, chairs the firm. According to Bloomberg, the raise runs into several billion rand.
Wimsey Capital belongs to the Otto family. Patriarch Chris Otto co-founded PSG and helped launch Capitec. Platform Investment Partners, on the other hand, is led by CEO Shaun Clark. Dimension Data co-founder Richard Came serves as the firm’s executive chairman, according to MyBroadband. Stevenson declined to share the exact deal value. However, he confirmed the raise did not involve a change of control at Comsol.
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Comsol has built fixed wireless infrastructure in South Africa for nearly three decades. Now, the company is using its new capital to expand into home broadband. Specifically, it plans a nationwide 5G-Advanced fixed wireless access rollout. Comsol will operate as a wholesale provider, not a retail one. This means internet service providers, mobile virtual network operators, and wireless internet providers can all access its network.
The build-out targets around 2,000 base stations across the country. If completed, this would make Comsol’s network one of South Africa’s largest and highest-capacity 5G systems. So far, the rollout already covers more than one million households in Gauteng. That progress came after just six months of construction, according to ITWeb. Stevenson aims for full Gauteng coverage by March 2027. After that, Comsol plans to expand into the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, and other major regional centres through 2027 and 2028.
Comsol also says it runs one of only two production-grade standalone 5G cores currently active in South Africa. Additionally, the company claims its network delivers upload speeds roughly double those of standard 5G mobile services. This matters because most South African households still lack fibre. In fact, around 85 percent of homes remain unconnected to fibre networks. Many currently rely on mobile data or other fixed wireless options instead.
To support the rollout, Comsol struck a vendor-partner deal with Chinese equipment maker ZTE Corp. The network itself runs on C-band spectrum. ICASA, South Africa’s communications regulator, allocated that spectrum to Comsol back in 2022.
This funding round arrives at a strong moment for the industry. South Africa’s broadband market could reach R82.8 billion in revenue by 2029, according to industry estimates. Across the wider continent, the picture looks similarly bright. GSMA data shows African 5G connections could hit 382 million by 2030, up sharply from roughly 54 million today. Overall, the technology could add $10 billion to Africa’s economy within that same period.
For Comsol, this marks its biggest push yet into the consumer market. The company built its reputation in enterprise and private networks. Now, it’s betting that fixed wireless 5G can rival fibre on speed, price, and reach, especially in a country where fibre still remains out of reach for most homes.
