Vodacom will also be launching 4G technology in South Africa before the end of the year, CEO Shameel Joosub reveals, ramping up the race with competitor MTN.
“We will definitely see LTE in SA before the end of the year [and] from there we will continue to grow it more each month, with more and more sites,” Joosub in an interview with Aki Anastasiou on Google+ Hangout.
The announcement comes only days after rival telecoms giant MTN revealed that preparations were well advanced for the roll out of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) sites across the cities of Johannesburg, Durban and Pretoria by the end of the year. MTN has been piloting the new technology in sites around Gauteng since mid-2011. On Tuesday, the company announced it will be stepping up commercial roll-out with Chief Technology Officer of MTN SA Kanagaratnam Lambotharan announcing to the media that over 250 LTE sites are already ready to go.
It is, then, in the wake of this announcement that Vodacom’s Joosub – who was appointed new CEO of the company on July 5th of this year – has come forward with the rival company’s own plans to match commercial roll-out dates.
Josuub has however acknowledged that the firm will face substantial difficulties if they are to achieve an end-of –year launch, given that the company needs to have more spectrum in order to provide the next-generation technology. Josuub stated: “There isn’t available spectrum at this stage that has been given to the operators to have a full experience of LTE…For 4G to work, we need spectrum in the 1 800MHz or 800Mhz or 2,6GHz bands.”
The CEO added that while the company does have 1 800 MHz, it would need to be refarmed for use in LTE provision, which will necessarily take time to organise as the spectrum is currently used by the 2G network. Upgrading of base equipment is also underway, and the company is racing to roll out sufficient new fibre to launch the 4G network.
LTE is a new generation technology aimed at providing a stable and continuous wireless network for mobile devices, and also promises a higher-speed internet connection for devices.
As such, the competing telecoms companies appear to be gearing up in the race to see who will bring LTE to the South African market first. We know that LTE will be appearing commercially by the end of the year, the only question that remains, is who will be the provider?
