Nokia successfully pilots Africa’s first Fixed Wireless Access 5G slicing trial with Safaricom

Nokia said Monday it has successfully completed Africa's first Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) network slicing deployment on a live 4G and 5G commercial network across RAN, transport and core with mobile operator, Safaricom.

The multi-vendor pilot took place in Kenya's Western Region and it shows that the African operator is now poised to support new types of enterprise network services, including fast lane internet access and application slicing.

"It is great to have successfully completed this pilot with Safaricom, which is a huge step forward in providing Safaricom with state-of-the-art connectivity. Early experience of new slicing technology is invaluable in understanding the new business opportunities it enables," said Ramy Hashem, Head of Safaricom Customer Team at Nokia.

According to Nokia, network slicing enables operators the ability to divide a network into multiple virtual slices, which can be optimized for a specific target application or service. The end user of each network slice can then be serviced with different priorities, routing, levels of network performance and security capabilities. 

The pilot demonstrated a number of solutions including Nokia's AirScale 4G/5G base stations, the NetAct network management and assurance system and Nokia's FastMile 4G/5G CPE.

"We are proud to have hosted Africa's first successful pilot of 4G/5G FWA slicing on our network, and looking forward to tailoring our service offerings to individual customers and industries, to meet their needs for high-speed connectivity precisely and without unnecessary cost. Nokia's expertise has been key to this success, and we anticipate many more strategic wins in this area as our business expands," said James Maitai, Network Director, Safaricom.