MTN gives 3.6Mbps HSDPA details

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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In January this year MTN announced that it had started the staged rollout of  its 3.6Mbps HSDPA, 7.2Mbps HSDPA and its HSUPA services. The company said that its rollout would rely heavily on adequate backhaul bandwidth to support the higher speeds.

MTN yesterday said that while it would like to keep the exact tower count of its current 3.6Mbps HSDPA rollout confidential, that a “significant number” of towers had already been upgraded to the higher HSDPA speeds.

MTN further said that the higher speeds were predominantly available in Gauteng and the Western Cape, but that the rollout was a country-wide initiative.

At its announcement in January MTN said that users who connect to the MTN HSDPA network in 3.6Mbps-enabled areas will initially automatically receive the higher speeds at no extra charge.

The company is however planning to charge an additional fee for the enhanced speeds, but said that this fee would also give users “additional value”, not merely access to faster speeds.

MTN did not divulge any details as to what the additional value would entail.

MTN HSDPA 3.6Mbps discussion