MTN has said it is on track to switch on a commercial LTE (Long Term Evolution) network by year-end in three key urban areas, namely Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban.
MTN SA's chief technology officer, Kanagaratnam Lambotharan, said during a press briefing on yesterday that Cape Town is also being looked at, but there are challenges with re-farming spectrum in the area. MTN is re-farming some of its spectrum in the 1800MHz band in order to rollout LTE, as no mobile operators have been granted spectrum for LTE as yet.
MTN introduced a pilot LTE network in July last year covering over 100 LTE sites in Sandton, Fourways, Centurion, Roodepoort and around OR Tambo International Airport. Lamotharan says MTN plans to have between 400 and 500 LTE sites live by year-end, and 250 sites are ready to go. Pricing for users is yet to be confirmed.
MTN says the commercialisation of technologies such as LTE is expected to address consumer needs for full service continuity, a seamless network and high speed Internet connection.
According to Lamotharan, SA's consumer appetite has tripled with data consumption up by 200% year-on-year, and smartphone usage up by 128%. "Likewise with data users soaring to approximately 12 million users, the continued evolution of data speeds will bring massive changes to the user experience over the coming years."
MTN says it hopes that with the commercial launch, its subscribers can "optimally tap into future services and applications that the LTE ecosystem is expected to provide".
Chief marketing officer at MTN SA Serame Taukobong added that, in the next 18 months, MTN will be entering spaces it hasn't traditionally played in. In terms of the commercial LTE launch, Taukobong said MTN would be partnering with key content partners to offer services such as video streaming, gaming and peer-to-peer sharing.
Infrastructure investments
MTN is investing about R5 billion in its network infrastructure this year, with 204 new 2G sites and 696 new 3G sites rolled out so far. This is in addition to MTN's investment of R2 billion Capex in its network in 2011 (which saw 314 new 2G sites and 598 new 3G sites).
MTN says this year it has increased its 2G network coverage to 98.6% of SA's population, while EDGE covers 92% and 3G covers close to 65% of SA. This bulk of this year's infrastructure investment is being focused on providing over one thousand 3G base stations in order to improve broadband penetration across the country.
"With the increase of mobile and data usage, and an aggressive approach to providing access to broadband to more areas so as to narrow the digital divide, it was important that we focus on expanding our network and coverage to ensure capacity to carry traffic seamlessly and, therefore, enhancing our customers' experience," explains Lambotharan.
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