Nokia Powers East Africa’s First 5G Commercial Services with Safaricom

Safaricom has launched 5G services in Kenya, becoming the telecoms operator to bring 5G to East Africa.

Nokia and Safaricom, the leading telecommunications service provider in Kenya, are powering East Africa's first 5G commercial services, enabling new applications in areas such as virtual and augmented reality (AR/VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) for Safaricom subscribers in Kenya.

Commenting on this development, Amr K. El Leithy, SVP, Middle East and Africa Market, Nokia, said, "Our 5G network for Safaricom is a key part of this journey and we are committed to working with the operator to transform the communications landscape in the country. This will open new business opportunities for Safaricom."

Leveraging Nokia's 5G Single Radio Access Network (SRAN) technology and 5G FastMile gateways, the Kenyan operator will deliver ultra-fast Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) services to its subscribers across Kisumu and the Western Province of Kenya.

Nokia's AirScale SRAN platform enables ultra-low latency, huge connectivity and extreme capacity to support current and future demands while the FastMile 5G gateway provides fibre-like speeds for fixed wireless services to subscribers.

The 5G network also utilizes the Nokia 5G Cloud Mobility Manager (CMM) that provides the scalability, flexibility, high availability, and performance for small enterprise deployments to large consumer networks as well as Nokia's NetAct network management system for improved network monitoring and management.

At launch, Safaricom showcased the capabilities of the 5G network with three use cases -

• 5G hologram - live 5G network was used to teleport Safaricom's executives from the Safaricom office in Kisumu to the launch event in Nairobi
• Ultra-HD video communication using 5G Fixed Wireless Access connectivity powered by WiFi-6 with Nokia Beacon 6
• virtual fashion shopping

"We are proud to be the first operator in East Africa to launch 5G services, bringing the benefits of 5G technology to our customers. Our long-term partner Nokia's technologies and services expertise helped us achieve this milestone in our journey to provide world-class broadband services to our customers," said Peter Ndegwa, CEO of Safaricom.

March 26, 2021