en.Wedoany.com Reported - Recently, South African mobile operator rain and China's Huawei announced that they will continue to expand the deployment of sub-1GHz Massive MIMO 5G network in South Africa, with plans to build thousands of commercial sites. Currently, the two parties have completed large-scale installation and commercial activation of low-band Massive MIMO equipment in several major cities across South Africa. They will subsequently extend these sites to broader areas to enhance 5G coverage depth, network capacity, and indoor signal capabilities. The project is described as the world's first sub-1GHz Massive MIMO 5G network on a scale of thousands of sites, though this "world's first" claim is currently based on corporate announcements.
This round of network construction utilizes sub-1GHz low-frequency spectrum for deployment. Low-frequency wireless signals travel farther and typically penetrate building walls and cover complex terrain better than mid- and high-frequency bands, making them more suitable for large-scale basic coverage and indoor communication. However, traditional low-band base stations often use configurations with fewer transceiver channels, such as 4T4R, limiting per-site capacity and spectrum efficiency. In areas with increasing user numbers or concentrated data traffic, this can result in broad coverage but insufficient network capacity. By introducing Massive MIMO into the low-band FDD network, rain and Huawei aim to retain the advantages of low-band coverage while improving per-site capacity through increased antenna transceiver channels and multi-user parallel transmission capabilities.
According to live network results, deployed sites have seen uplink coverage improve by approximately 5dB, downlink coverage by about 3dB, and network capacity up to three times that of traditional 4T4R equipment. For mobile communication networks, improved uplink coverage enhances the stability of users uploading videos, files, and business data to the network, while downlink coverage improvements help expand base station service boundaries and improve indoor signals. Increased capacity allows a single site to support more users and data traffic during peak hours. However, these figures come from commercial network tests and corporate disclosures by rain and Huawei, and actual performance may be affected by site density, spectrum bandwidth, building environments, and terminal capabilities.
Expanding the network to thousands of sites involves more than just batch replacement of antennas. Operators must decide which base stations to upgrade directly and where to add new sites based on existing communication towers, equipment room space, site power supply, and transmission conditions, while simultaneously configuring Massive MIMO radio equipment, antenna systems, baseband processing units, and network management parameters. Given the larger coverage area of low-band sites, if wireless capacity increases significantly, the fiber or microwave backhaul between base stations and the core network also needs to be expanded accordingly; otherwise, the new wireless capabilities may be constrained by transmission links. As the project advances to more cities and non-core areas, site selection, equipment transportation, tower load-bearing, and long-term maintenance will become key aspects of actual construction.
From a network architecture perspective, rain is forming a multi-layer wireless system combining low-band wide-coverage sites with existing mid- and high-band 5G networks. Low-band sites are responsible for expanding continuous coverage and improving signals in indoor and edge areas, while mid- and high-band sites provide higher capacity in city centers, commercial districts, and high-traffic locations. After connecting both types of sites through a unified core network and transmission network, operators can allocate network resources based on user location, terminal capabilities, and real-time load, reducing coverage gaps that would occur if relying solely on high-band sites, while also avoiding the long-term low-capacity state of low-band networks.
South Africa has a large geographical area with significant differences in population density and communication infrastructure between cities. For rain, expanding low-band Massive MIMO to thousands of sites can broaden 5G service coverage while reducing reliance solely on dense site construction, and improve connection quality in residential areas, office buildings, and other indoor environments. Key engineering milestones to watch in the next phase include specific site counts and regional distribution, progress in upgrading existing base stations, low-band spectrum allocation, backhaul network expansion, and the capacity and energy consumption performance of new sites under long-term commercial conditions. Currently, both parties have not disclosed the overall completion timeline or phased construction numbers for the entire network of thousands of sites.
