South African Telco company, Telkom has deployed a new super-fast LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) network at Johannesburg’s Parkview and its surrounding environs. This network will see the people receive peak internet connectivity speeds of up to 150Mbps.
The area, according to the Telco company, is a place of the future –‘Futurehood’- as it is looking at making the connections by the end of next year’s first quarter.
LTE-A is a carrier-aggregated network connection delivered over the cellular network, which means that it takes a number of spectrum portions and combines them into a one download stream with higher speeds.
Telkom has a 60MHz of spectrum, 40MHz of which is being used for LTE-A, in the 2 300MHz band of spectrum with other players like Vodacom and MTN having to refarm spectrum from the 1 800MHz band to roll out their LTE services which means that they’ve only been able to get 10 – 20 MHz of spectrum to play with, preventing them from rolling out an aggregated service like LTE-A.
The Managing Director, Telkom Mobile and Consumer, Attila Vitai said: “Telkom is excited to launch LTE-A in Parkview as part of our new “Futurehood” campaign. The Futurehood is a place where the possibilities of high speed broadband, meet the specific requirements of the people, homes and businesses across SA.
“Telkom is on a journey to deliver super-fast broadband options on both mobile and fixed lines to cater for the specific needs and requirements of our customers. We are gearing ourselves up to be as responsive as possible to what our customers want, be it VDSL, Fibre or LTE-A.”
The MD further said that his company’s LTE-A offer was comparable to speeds available over a fibre network and offered a compelling alternative to fixed line solutions for high speed connectivity.
“LTE-A it is completely ‘Plug and Play’. LTE-A can turn your home into a fully connected Wi-Fi hotspot allowing for up to 32 devices to be connected simultaneously.”
The promotional offer unveiled to customers in the Parkview area includes 100Gb of data, at peak speeds of up to 150Mbps, for R1 399 over a 36 month contract.