LTE networks in SA in only 3 years?
Business research and consulting firm, Frost & Sullivan, believes that companies – including Vodacom (VOD) and MTN (MTN) – are likely to only deploy LTE networks in as much as three years.
Mervin Miemoukanda, Frost & Sullivan’s ICT research analyst, says that the issuance of LTE spectrum is critical to the future of the telecom market, as well as the wider economy.
“To date, LTE is the best technology to support these new innovative services,” stated Miemoukanda. “With declining voice service revenues, mobile operators have been looking at innovative data services as a way of boosting their revenues”.
More and more consumers and companies in South Africa are requiring bandwidth-hungry services, such as cloud-based services and telematics.
Earlier this month, The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) decided to to postpone its program to allocate LTE spectrum, which is a blow to existing telcos such as MTN and Vodacom.
“However, incumbent mobile operators are still relying upon Telkom’s backhaul. This acts, somewhat, as a restraint to the deployment of LTE in South Africa,” said Miemoukanda.
“Vodacom and MTN are still rolling out their extensive fibre optic and microwave networks. Frost & Sullivan predict that these companies will, therefore, most likely be ready to deploy LTE networks in the next three years,” the analyst continued.
“Currently, most of them have been focussing on expanding their 3G networks across the country,” Miemoukanda says.
Neotel is currently testing a number of technology platforms including LTE. It joins Vodacom, MTN, Cell C and 8ta in trialing LTE; but Neotel is in the privileged position to be in possession of valuable 800MHz spectrum, which is suitable for LTE deployments.
Vodacom was the first company to trial LTE in South Africa, showing speeds exceeding 100Mbps using the technology at their Midrand campus.
MTN South Africa said earlier this month that it has embarked on a pilot of 103 long-term evolution (LTE) base stations, in-line with its future LTE deployment strategy.
MTN SA MD, Karel Pienaar, said that the group continues to roll-out more LTE sites. “We just need clarity (on spectrum).” He added that the group could roll-out immediately.
“It would irresponsible of us to go commercially, ‘we can re-farm that spectrum’. I can do the first year’s capacity – it just needs interim relief. Give the operators that are delivering interim relief, while [the regulators] are defining the long term,” Pienaar said.
8ta is also actively trialing LTE. “As the specified upgrade path for a 3GPP network is LTE, it is prudent to consider this as an option in terms of 8.ta’s own evolutionary path,” said Amith Maharaj, senior managing executive at Telkom Mobile.
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