{"id":44959,"date":"2013-08-29T12:33:57","date_gmt":"2013-08-29T10:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=44959"},"modified":"2013-08-29T12:35:24","modified_gmt":"2013-08-29T10:35:24","slug":"cell-c-network-perfect-by-november-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/44959\/cell-c-network-perfect-by-november-ceo\/","title":{"rendered":"Cell C network “perfect” by November: CEO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cell C CEO,\u00a0Alan Knott-Craig<\/a> is hopeful that the group’s\u00a0under-fire\u00a0network will be “perfect” by the end of November.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month (22 August 2013) Cell C<\/a>\u00a0announced that it would\u00a0roll out an additional 100 sites in Johannesburg over the next three months at a cost of R200 million, in\u00a0an effort to alleviate its strained network.<\/p>\n

This is in addition to an existing 959 sites in Johannesburg,\u00a0with the first 19 new sites expected to be on air by the end of August.<\/p>\n

Cell C\u00a0subscribers have voiced their displeasure over the quality of the operator’s network in recent months.<\/p>\n

Knott-Craig told CNBC Africa this week that Cell C has increased its customer base by as much as 30% to\u00a011.7 million,”in the last year and a bit”.<\/p>\n

“The traffic has doubled, and that is the voice traffic. When you come to the data traffic, I think its quadrupled,” he said.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0company\u00a0lead said that in Johannesburg in particular, “that\u2019s where we have seen consumers saying look we are going to go for a better price”.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn particular, the network in Johannesburg and Pretoria has been taking strain. In addition to the new sites, we have also embarked on a project to optimise close to 900 existing sites in Johannesburg and Pretoria to improve coverage and minimise interference on the network in high-density areas,\u201d the CEO said in a press statement in August.<\/p>\n

“We build about 120 (base stations) per month in the country, a large portion of which are built in Joburg.”<\/p>\n

Knott-Craig\u00a0admitted that the company needed to get its act together in terms of quality in Johannesburg – \u201cand we will do that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And when questioned when that will happen, Knott-Craig said: \u201cEnd of November\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said that the company has put a very well qualified team in place, just for Johannesburg, where he said the amount of traffic growth defies belief for a country so close to saturation.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir brief is that everything has got to be perfect by the end of November,”\u00a0Knott-Craig said.<\/p>\n

When questioned whether R200 million was enough of an investment, Knott-Craig pointed out that it\u2019s incremental, having recently\u00a0received an injection of $350 million from its shareholder,\u00a0Oger Telecoms<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By the end of 2013, Cell C said it would have 4,340 outdoor and indoor sites on air.<\/p>\n

Knott-Craig\u00a0said that the data prices in South Africa today were very low, while the voice prices were \u201cvery competitive\u201d.<\/p>\n

More on Cell C<\/h3>\n

Cell C admits network \u201ctaking strain\u201d<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Cell C dead by 2014: analyst<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Cell C sign-ups boom\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Cell C seeks profitability within 3 years<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Cell C: where the billions will go<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Cell C network quality complaints<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Cell C\u2019s massive virtual network plans<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Cell C network problems explained<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cell C CEO, Alan Knott-Craig is hopeful that the group’s under-fire network will be “perfect” by the end of November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":8572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[43,42,26,6317],"class_list":["post-44959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-alan-knott-craig","tag-cell-c","tag-headline","tag-oger-telecoms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44959","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=44959"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44965,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44959\/revisions\/44965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}