Tunisie Telecom and Ericsson announced on Friday that the operator has commenced offering NSA (non-standalone) 5G services that partly leverage TDD spectrum to deliver multi-gigabit speeds to customers.
Tunisie Telecom received its 5G licence from the Ministry of Communication Technologies and Digital Economy (along with Orange Tunisie and Ooredoo Tunisia) at the end of November 2024. All three operators officially launched their 5G network in mid-February 2025.
Tunisie Telecom’s 5G offering includes mobile broadband and fixed wireless access (FWA) for residential subscribers.
According to Ericsson, Tunisie Telecom’s 5G network comprises TDD sites using the 3.5 GHz band, and FDD sites using refarmed 4G spectrum in the 2100 and 1800 MHz bands.
While all three 5G licences include 100 MHz of spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band, Ericsson claims Tunisie Telecom’s TDD deployment is the first to make use of the band, and has clocked downlink speeds of 2.1 Gbps.
Oussama Samet, Central Director of Networks at Tunisie Telecom, noted that a key challenge in deploying the 5G network was the short time schedule set by the Tunisian Ministry of ICT to launch commercial services.
“Thanks to [Ericsson], we were able to meet the challenge of a very tight schedule, in a relatively complex environment and ecosystem,” he said in a statement.
