MTN South Africa has gone live with the commercial availability of LTE (Long Term Evolution) in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban, with no word of availability of the offering for Cape Town.
The operator has announced from tomorrow (Saturday), consumers in the three cities will be able to purchase LTE devices and access the revolutionary technology on their network.
As part of the launch, MTN is offering the LTE Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9” on a MTN 2GB TopUp contract for R799.00 per month, over 12 months.
Kanagaratnam Lambotharan, Chief Technology Officer at MTN SA, said: “Having piloted LTE for some time now, we are confident that we have made significant milestones in providing access to this technology and are happy to be able to offer our customers the LTE experience over our world-class MTN network.
“To date, there are a limited number of devices that offer support for multiple LTE bands including legacy 2G and 3G support.”
Lambotharan added: “As we know, mobile users like to browse the Internet, share photos, download music and watch video clips and have therefore created a need for enhanced and uninterrupted experience for the Internet on the network, especially with video. This has resulted in the global move towards LTE.”
MTN’s street level coverage map showing areas with MTN LTE coverage can be viewed on the company&ssquo;s website by entering a street name.
“LTE promises to offer an enhanced and seamless broadband data experience, lower latency and high spectral efficiency,” Lambotharan said. “This also means that a high number of data users can be serviced without compromising the quality of service they receive – a key mantra behind MTN’s customer service.
“Our 2020 Broadband for all vision includes the provision up to 100Mbps to consumers in urban areas. MTN’s commercialisation of the technology is a quantum leap towards realising this vision.”
