{"id":12012,"date":"2012-05-10T00:06:19","date_gmt":"2012-05-09T22:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=12012"},"modified":"2012-05-10T11:18:28","modified_gmt":"2012-05-10T09:18:28","slug":"cell-c-looking-for-3g-roaming-partner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/12012\/cell-c-looking-for-3g-roaming-partner\/","title":{"rendered":"Cell C looking for 3G roaming partner"},"content":{"rendered":"

Industry speculation suggests that Cell C<\/a> is currently in negotiations with Vodacom<\/a> and MTN<\/a> regarding a 3G<\/a> roaming agreement.<\/p>\n

Three well-placed, independent sources have told MyBroadband BusinessTech that Cell C CEO, Alan Knott-Craig<\/a> is in discussions to try to secure a 3G roaming agreement to compliment the company\u2019s 2G roaming agreement with Vodacom.<\/p>\n

Cell C lags behind Vodacom and MTN when it comes to 3G coverage in South Africa. This was partly caused by former Cell C CEO, Jeffrey Hedberg\u2019s<\/a> decision to not invest in a 3G network when his competitors invested in faster data networks.<\/p>\n

In 2008, Hedberg said that, while Cell C had a 3G-ready core network, \u20183G is hype and we won\u2019t fall prey to hype\u2019. At the time, Hedberg said that Cell C could not justify investing money into something [3G\/HSDPA] that does not offer a good return on investment.<\/p>\n

Hedberg\u2019s view was proven to be short-sighted, and in 2009, Cell C announced that it would be investing R5-billion in an HSPA+<\/a> network offering speeds of up to 21 Mbps.<\/p>\n

Cell C has made good progress with its HSPA+ network rollout, but it is no secret that the company is struggling with network quality and coverage in many regions.<\/p>\n

New Cell C CEO, Alan Knott-Craig has said that network quality is a core component of his strategy at Cell C, and a 3G roaming agreement can buy him time to fix the problems with Cell C\u2019s HSPA+ network.<\/p>\n

However, Cell C, MTN and Vodacom do not want to confirm the discussions.<\/p>\n

MTN South Africa said that it \u201cdoes not respond to market speculation, rumour or any specific corporate activity\u201d.<\/p>\n

Vodacom and Cell C also did not want to comment on the issue.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mobile voice disruption planned for SA market<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Cell C to sign another virtual operator agreement<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Changing the rules<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Industry rumours suggest that Cell C is currently in negotiations with Vodacom and MTN regarding a potential 3G roaming agreement<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12059,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[43,42,26,28,27],"class_list":["post-12012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-alan-knott-craig","tag-cell-c","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12012"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12054,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12012\/revisions\/12054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}