MTN hits 10.35 Gbps in Randburg upper-6 GHz 5G-Advanced trial

MTN South Africa says it has completed Africa's first 5G-Advanced trial in the upper 6 GHz band, recording a peak download speed of 10.35 Gbps at its Randburg headquarters.

The test ran with Huawei under a temporary radio licence from the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa. MTN used a dedicated 5G Standalone core, ultra-wideband active antennas and advanced beamforming across roughly 400 MHz of contiguous bandwidth in the upper 6 GHz range.

The headline number will travel faster than the caveats. 10.35 Gbps is a controlled, single-site peak — not a speed customers should expect on commercial 5G tomorrow. South Africa has identified the upper 6 GHz band for International Mobile Telecommunications in the National Radio Frequency Plan 2026, but no operator has been assigned that spectrum for day-to-day service. The trial licence exists to demonstrate capacity, not to productise it.

What the trial actually tested

5G-Advanced is the mid-decade upgrade path between today's 5G and the 6G systems expected later this decade. Upper 6 GHz — roughly 6.425 GHz to 7.125 GHz — offers mid-band capacity that operators want for dense urban throughput. Wi-Fi advocates have fought over the same frequencies internationally. South Africa's NRFP 2026 identification for IMT is a planning signal, not an exclusive reservation under international radio rules, and it is not yet an auction result.

MTN's Randburg demonstration therefore does two jobs. Technically, it shows that U6GHz hardware, a SA core and wide channels can clear the 10 Gbps mark in lab-like conditions. Politically, it is a public argument that the band should be assigned to mobile operators rather than left idle or contested indefinitely.

CEO Ferdi Moolman framed the result as proof that South Africa can still host frontier connectivity work. That claim is fair for a trial. It does not answer when ICASA will assign the band, on what competitive conditions, or how indoor penetration at upper 6 GHz will behave outside a headquarters campus.

Spectrum politics behind the speed test

Operators have spent years chasing mid-band capacity after earlier auctions and sharing arrangements. Upper 6 GHz is the next contested pool. By publishing a 10.35 Gbps figure now, MTN is shaping the consultation climate around IMT roadmap implementation and future assignment plans — including the public processes ICASA has already opened on radio frequency spectrum assignment plans.

Readers should separate three timelines. The trial happened. Commercial U6GHz handsets and cells are not generally available in South Africa. Assignment of the band remains a regulatory event that has not occurred. Conflating those three is how lab peaks become misleading marketing.

Huawei's role will also draw attention in a country where vendor geopolitics still shadows network upgrades. The Wire Room notes the partnership as stated by MTN; it does not treat the speed result as a verdict on vendor policy.

Wire Room takeaway

Record the facts: Randburg HQ, temporary ICASA licence, Huawei partnership, 5G-Advanced U6GHz architecture, 10.35 Gbps peak, Africa-first claim on this band. Treat everything else — customer speeds, auction timing, national coverage — as unproven.

The useful question after the press release is not whether MTN can hit ten gigabits in a trial. It is whether ICASA's spectrum calendar turns that demonstration into assigned capacity South African networks can actually use. ## Context for South African readers

South African technology stories rarely arrive as clean product launches. They arrive as regulatory calendars, infrastructure programmes, security disclosures and capital-markets notices that only make sense when the local constraints are visible. Load shedding history, spectrum scarcity, POPIA duties, JSE disclosure habits and the gap between pilot sites and national coverage all change how a headline should be read.

That is why Wire Room copy keeps returning to what is confirmed, what is claimed and what is still open. A peak laboratory speed is not a consumer plan. A mall charger is not a national network. A patched vulnerability is not a closed incident. A consultation deadline is not an auction. An expansion strategy is not a connected building count.

Readers who need to act — as investors, operators, municipal officials, developers or simply as citizens using public apps — are better served by that separation than by recycled optimism. The desk will update when primary documents move: SENS announcements, gazettes, investigation reports, site lists and audited operating metrics.

Source discipline

Where this article cites company statements, regulator notices or investigative reporting, those are the anchors. Secondary amplification on social platforms should be treated as unverified until it points back to a primary record. Programme dates, tariffs, spectrum bands and affected brand lists change; check the latest official notice before repeating a figure in another channel.

The Wire Room habit is deliberately conservative on causation. Correlation between a cyber incident and a sales dip, or between a trial result and a policy outcome, needs evidence beyond a press release timeline. Until that evidence appears, the article stops at the ledger of confirmed facts and the practical questions those facts raise for South African stakeholders.

Closing note

South Africa’s digital stack is being rebuilt in public — sometimes through careful engineering, sometimes through forced disclosure. The useful journalism is the kind that helps a reader decide what changed this week and what remains unfinished. That standard applies whether the subject is retail cybersecurity, public EV charging, mid-band spectrum, emergency apps or wholesale fibre.

Hold the institutions to their own timelines. Demand the next metric. And treat every hero graphic as a pointer to the underlying record, not as a substitute for it.