Vodacom South Africa now has more than 400 Long Term Evolution (LTE) base stations live and is ahead of schedule to meet its target of switching on 500 by the end of the year.
As part of its push to rollout the wireless communication of high-speed data to cities across South Africa, the telecom also announced the commercial launch of LTE services in Durban.
Durban will be the third South african city to receive LTE after Johannesburg and Pretoria.
Alberts Breed, Vodacom’s Managing Executive in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), said: “The fact that our engineers have been able to reach over 400 LTE-enabled sites in such a short space of time is no mean feat. Their hard work has meant that today we can be the first operator in South Africa to provide our customers with a commercial LTE service in Durban.”
Breed added: “To start off with we have rolled out the technology to a small number of sites – mainly around the Umhlanga area – but we plan to grow this number in the coming months. In fact, the plan is to have over 60 sites up and running across KwaZulu-Natal by the end of the first quarter of next year.”
LTE was first launched in South Africa by Vodacom in October. The technology, which has the capability to operate at speeds up to three times faster than 3G technology, is ultimately a game changer when it comes to how people experience the internet. Its higher speeds and lower latency mean a more stable user experience with stutter-free video and almost instantaneous music downloads.
The LTE service is currently available to Vodacom Contract customers and will be available to Top-up and Prepaid customers in 2013. It also requires customers to use a 64K or 128K SIM card.
For more information on the LTE coverage map and list of stores, customers can visit www.vodacom.co.za/lte.
