Telkom announces LTE advanced launch
Telkom on Tuesday announced that it will launch Long Term Evolution (LTE) in 50 suburbs, beginning December.
Telkom chief operating officer, Brian Armstrong, made the announcement at the 2014 MyBroadband Conference in Midrand on Tuesday (30 September).
LTE Advanced is a cellular networking standard that offers higher throughput than its predecessor, LTE standard.
Telkom said that it is currently upgrading its network to offer customers peak speeds of over 200Mbps, with a view to develop its network to ultimately deliver LTE-A peak speeds of 3Gbps.
Armstrong said that the trials have been concluded with LTE Advanced ready for commercial launch at the end of the year, with plans to cover 50 suburbs around the country with LTE-A by March 2015.
“We believe that, in the coming years, LTE-A will become the de facto mobile data standard,” the COO said.
“Our LTE-A platform runs on the 2.3GHz spectrum, which is unique to Telkom. The spectrum allows us to offer efficient, high quality and stable LTE-A technology, to our customers. The speeds offered on this technology are comparable to those offered over fibre connections, therefore offering an unparalleled wireless Internet experience.”
The news follows a trial conducted by rival operator, Vodacom, last week.
While operators around the world have taken to calling LTE and other technologies 4G, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) previously told MyBroadband that it only considers IMT-Advanced technologies as true “4G”.
IMT-Advanced includes LTE Advanced, but not LTE.
Telkom LTE-A rollout
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