LTE broadband race on

Vodacom has taken the lead in the country's race to roll-out LTE with the launch of the country's first commercial service earlier this month. However, the triumph is one of marketing rather than technology - with national availability of commercial LTE services still at least two to three years away.

The launch puts Vodafone subsidiary Vodacom ahead of rivals MTN and Cell C, who have yet to launch their own commerical LTE offerings, which are promised to go live before the end of the year. 8ta — the country's fourth and newest mobile operator — will launch an LTE trial on 1 November, with commercial services to follow in 2013.

The commercial launch of the service appears calculated to claim a marketing first: while Vodacom plans to roll out LTE at 500 of its 9,000 base stations by the end of the year, the service is initially accessible via only around 70 Vodacom base stations in Johannesburg.

The Vodacom announcement comes just weeks after MTN disclosed plans to launch a commercial LTE service across around 500 base stations in Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Durban before the end of the year.

LTE obstacles

Despite the apparent rush to market, operators admit that high capex costs, a shortage of devices and a lack of frequency spectrum are constraining the wider rollout of LTE in South Africa. For the most part, the first LTE services will cover major cities well served by fixed-line broadband services rather than the more under-serviced parts of the country.

The biggest obstacle to LTE is that the regulator has dithered for years about the process of allocating much-coveted spectrum in the 2.6HGz band to network operators. Delays in migration to digital television also mean that operators will need to wait until at least 2015 to get their hands on the 800MHz 'digital dividend' spectrum.

South Africa's mobile networks will all dabble in LTE, but a national LTE network is at least two to three years away, said Cell C chief commercial officer Jose Dos Santos, speaking at a conference hosted by South African broadband news and advocacy site MyBroadband recently.

Access to spectrum, the high costs of connecting base stations with fibre backhaul links, and the dearth of LTE devices in the market all pose major challenges for the networks, he added. Despite these obstacles, Cell C will have "something exciting to announce" about LTE before the end of the year.

Source : znet.com
Tags : broadband, lte, vodacom, cell c, mtn, internet speed, south africa broadband

Woza App
Direct Download our Andriod App
@ http://bit.ly/WL5lZB