{"id":23570,"date":"2012-10-11T13:01:27","date_gmt":"2012-10-11T11:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=23570"},"modified":"2012-10-11T13:07:23","modified_gmt":"2012-10-11T11:07:23","slug":"one-lte-network-for-cheaper-broadband-in-sa-cell-c-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/23570\/one-lte-network-for-cheaper-broadband-in-sa-cell-c-ceo\/","title":{"rendered":"One LTE network for cheaper broadband in SA: Cell C CEO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cell C<\/a> CEO, Alan Knott-Craig<\/a> says that it makes sense for South African operators to pool resources and build a single, national LTE<\/a> network to provide affordable broadband services.<\/p>\n

Knott-Craig said that operators should set up a consortium, which should get access to suitable spectrum at an affordable rate to build this wholesale LTE network.<\/p>\n

\u201cOperators and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can then compete on a retail level using affordable wholesale access to this national LTE network,\u201d said Knott-Craig.<\/p>\n

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA<\/a>) and the Department of Communications (DoC<\/a>) are currently grappling with how to hand out valuable LTE spectrum (2600MHz and 700\/800MHz), but Knott-Craig said that the battle for spectrum can be avoided with a single wholesale LTE network.<\/p>\n

The Cell C CEO said that the spectrum resources \u2013 in both the 2600MHz and 700\/800MHz spectrum bands \u2013 can be pooled for this network, which will lower the costs and ensure the best possible service levels.<\/p>\n

Knott-Craig said that there is a growing need for data in South Africa, and that wireless services will be the main technology to provide residential customers with fast, affordable broadband.<\/p>\n

To keep the cost to consumers down, the input costs to build an LTE network must be as low as possible. A spectrum bidding war and duplicate networks will significantly lift the input costs to operators, which does not serve anyone\u2019s purpose, Knott-Craig said.<\/p>\n

Despite the fierce competition between the operators, Knott-Craig is confident that industry players can work together to make this happen. He said that everyone seems to be speaking the same language about an LTE network already.<\/p>\n

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

Cell C marches on in mobile data war<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Telkom Business unveils cheapest ever mobile data prices<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Knott-Craig has his work cut out: Joosub<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Cell C slashes prepaid voice and data prices<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Cell C halves data prices<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cell C CEO Alan Knott-Craig is calling for one national wholesale LTE network to be built by a consortium<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[43,42,1444,26,36],"class_list":["post-23570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-alan-knott-craig","tag-cell-c","tag-doc","tag-headline","tag-icasa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23570","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=23570"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24066,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23570\/revisions\/24066"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}