Africa Tech Festival 2024 is done and dusted, but the annual event served as a welcome reminder that more needs to be done in order to better serve local communities struggling to gain access to connectivity, as well as ensuring the most suitable environments are in place in order to bring next-generation technologies to the African continent. One topic of discussion that addresses both of the above elements is Net5.5G.
It is a technology that Huawei first outlined at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona towards the beginning of the year, and has since looked to collaborate with the likes of MTN.
Now more use cases for Net5.5G are starting to take shape, and at the Cape Town-based event last week, industry stakeholders were present to unpack the potential that the broadband connectivity could deliver.
“During the summit, the World Broadband Association (WBBA), the IPv6 Forum, the African Telecommunications Union (ATU), Technology Service Providers of Kenya (TESPOK), National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), MTN Group, and MTN South Africa jointly launched the Africa Net5.5G Action Plan Initiative,” Huawei shared in a release with Hypertext.
“This calls on industry stakeholders to accelerate the commercial rollout of Net5.5G and foster its prosperity,” it added.
To that end, the stakeholders confirmed that Southern Africa has become the first region to implement the UBBF Net5.5G Pioneer Program.
Speaking to attendees, John OMO (pictured below), secretary-general of the ATU, explained that Africa is at a pivotal juncture in its digital transformation journey, with the embracing of Net5.5G set to enable the continent to build more resilient and flexible network infrastructures that cater to the needs of the current AI era.
This technological leap is also said to help address increasingly growing traffic, bridging the digital divide, and fostering sustainable development, according to Omo.
In order to meet these newly defined needs, the Worldwide Broadband Association (WBBA) defined the target architecture for Net5.5G.
To that end, this includes WiFi 7 connectivity, 400GE/800GE bearer networks, AI data centre networks, and network digital maps, in order to help carriers upgrade their networks in order to build a high-speed and high-quality network infrastructure.
One of the companies working on the above, as well as some of its own innovation solutions based by Net5.5G is MTN South Africa. Here the carrier highlighted its Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution in particular.
Magatho Mello, MTN Group GM of Multinational Clients, shared that his team is proactively executing its B2B strategy in partnership with Huawei to delivering a secure multi-branch connectivity offering.
“MTN South Africa supports the Net 5.5G network architecture framework, actively implements commercial deployment of key technologies such as 400GE, network digital map, and SRv6, and strives to build high-quality IP networks in the AI era to provide excellent service experience for users,” added Zoltan Miklos, GMr of Network Planning at MTN South Africa.
“Huawei will help carriers build Net5.5G converged IP networks to stimulate new growth by leveraging key capabilities such as 400GE/800GE, elastic experience assurance based on SRv6 and slicing, and ADN L4–powered Network Digital Map,” emphasised Kaiyin Zhu (pictured below), director of Huawei Data Communication Standard & Patent Department.
Moving forward, Huawei explained that for Net5.5G to thrive, governments must provide industry policy guidance, and carriers must continue to construct Net5.5G networks.
By the time next year’s Africa Tech Festival rolls around, it will be interesting to see how this burgeoning space will have developed both in South Africa, and the rest of the continent.
