{"id":7649,"date":"2012-03-12T22:11:03","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T22:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=7649"},"modified":"2012-11-14T15:16:47","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T13:16:47","slug":"lte-networks-in-sa-in-only-3-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/7649\/lte-networks-in-sa-in-only-3-years\/","title":{"rendered":"LTE networks in SA in only 3 years?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Business research and consulting firm, Frost & Sullivan<\/a>, believes that companies – including Vodacom<\/a> (VOD) and MTN<\/a> (MTN) – are likely to only deploy LTE networks in as much as three years.<\/p>\n

Mervin Miemoukanda, Frost & Sullivan\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo date, LTE is the best technology to support these new innovative services,” stated Miemoukanda. \u201cWith declining voice service revenues, mobile operators have been looking at innovative data services as a way of boosting their revenues\u201d.<\/p>\n

More and more consumers and companies in South Africa are requiring bandwidth-hungry services, such as cloud-based services and telematics.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa<\/a> (ICASA) decided to to\u00a0postpone its program to allocate LTE spectrum, which is a blow to existing telcos such as MTN and Vodacom.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, incumbent mobile operators are still relying upon Telkom\u2019s backhaul. This acts,\u00a0somewhat, as a restraint to the deployment of LTE in South Africa,” said Miemoukanda.<\/p>\n

\u201cVodacom 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,\u201d the analyst continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurrently, most of them have been focussing on expanding their 3G networks across the country,\u201d Miemoukanda says.<\/p>\n

Neotel<\/a> is currently testing a number of technology platforms including LTE. It joins Vodacom, MTN, Cell C<\/a> and 8ta<\/a> in trialing LTE; but Neotel is in the privileged position to be in possession of valuable 800MHz spectrum, which is suitable for LTE deployments.<\/p>\n

Vodacom was the first company to trial LTE in South Africa, showing speeds exceeding 100Mbps using the technology at their Midrand campus.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

MTN SA MD, Karel Pienaar<\/a>, said that the group continues to roll-out more LTE sites. \u201cWe just need clarity (on spectrum).\u201d He added that the group could roll-out immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would irresponsible of us to go commercially, \u2018we can re-farm that spectrum\u2019. I can do the first year\u2019s capacity \u2013 it just needs interim relief. Give the operators that are delivering interim relief, while [the regulators] are defining the long term,\u201d Pienaar said.<\/p>\n

8ta is also actively trialing LTE. \u201cAs the specified upgrade path for a 3GPP network is LTE, it is prudent to consider this as an option in terms of 8.ta\u2019s own evolutionary path,\u201d said Amith Maharaj<\/a>, senior managing executive at Telkom<\/a> Mobile.<\/p>\n

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

Neotel trials LTE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

ICASA postpones broadband spectrum licensing, again<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

LTE 1800MHz spectrum negotiations ongoing<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Business research and consulting firm, Frost & Sullivan, believes that companies – including Vodacom and MTN – are likely to only deploy LTE networks in as much as three years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":7659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[407,42,26,1124,525,28,261,65,1933],"class_list":["post-7649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-8ta","tag-cell-c","tag-headline","tag-karel-pienaar","tag-lte","tag-mtn","tag-neotel","tag-telkom","tag-vodcom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7649","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7649"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26502,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7649\/revisions\/26502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}