{"id":42407,"date":"2013-07-19T13:26:07","date_gmt":"2013-07-19T11:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=42407"},"modified":"2013-07-19T14:16:58","modified_gmt":"2013-07-19T12:16:58","slug":"lte-still-a-product-for-the-haves-broadband-infraco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/42407\/lte-still-a-product-for-the-haves-broadband-infraco\/","title":{"rendered":"LTE still a product for the “haves”: Broadband Infraco"},"content":{"rendered":"

While South African operators\u00a0clamour\u00a0to roll out LTE infrastructure, Broadband Infraco<\/a>\u00a0CEO Puleng\u00a0Kwele<\/a> says, for now, it remains a product for the “haves”.<\/p>\n

Speaking at an event in Sandton on Thursday evening (18 July), Kwele, who took the reins of the state owned company in April 2012, said: “LTE is a product of the haves and the have nots shall continue to suffer.”<\/p>\n

Kwele conceded that the private sector was doing “very well” in rolling out LTE, which she said would form a critical part of the local telco landscape in future – driven by wireless.<\/p>\n

However, she also pointed out that\u00a0operators\u00a0still had a vast amount of users on their 2G networks.<\/p>\n

Vodacom,\u00a0MTN,\u00a0and Telkom Mobile have all launched a commercial LTE service, with Cell C expected to launch its service soon having already\u00a0trialed\u00a0100 base stations.<\/p>\n

The latest edition of the\u00a0Ericsson<\/a>\u00a0Mobility Report, released in June, revealed that 60% of the world\u2019s population is due to be covered by Long Term Evolution (LTE<\/a>) technology in 2018, with subscriptions set to exceed one billion in 2017, and 2 billion in 2018.<\/p>\n

In May,\u00a0Juniper Research<\/a>\u00a0reported that the cumulative 4G LTE mobile broadband service revenues over the next five years will account for over $1 trillion.<\/p>\n

That would represent approximately 17% of the cumulative operator billed service revenue from all mobile services, it said.<\/p>\n

Spectrum<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kwele said that the availability spectrum in the country remains an issue, and called on\u00a0the new\u00a0minister of communications\u00a0Yunus\u00a0Carrim<\/a>, to “talk about it”.<\/p>\n

Operators continue to plead with the\u00a0Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) to release valuable spectrum in order to improve their networks.<\/p>\n

Kwele also called on operators to look outside of the major\u00a0metropolitan\u00a0areas when laying fibre.<\/p>\n

“It’s time they build in other places other than the addressable markets. They have\u00a0reaped\u00a0the benefits for years,” Kwele said.<\/p>\n

“We have everyone building in the same places in areas that area already served, while the digital divide is increasing,” the chief executive said.<\/p>\n

More on LTE<\/h3>\n

Global LTE revenues set to reach $1 trillion<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

LTE\u2019s staggering growth rate<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Get ready for the mobile data boom \u2013 report<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Global LTE revenues set to reach $1 trillion<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Will SA mobile operators fall to the LTE curse?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

LTE across the globe<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While South African operators clamour to roll out LTE infrastructure, Broadband Infraco CEO Puleng Kwele says, for now, it remains a product for the haves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":23954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1876,42,1069,26,525,28,5863,1075,27,6270],"class_list":["post-42407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-broadband-infraco","tag-cell-c","tag-ericsson","tag-headline","tag-lte","tag-mtn","tag-puleng-kwele","tag-telkom-mobile","tag-vodacom","tag-yunus-carrim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42407","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42407"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42417,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42407\/revisions\/42417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}