Vodacom's network infrastructure

It's amazing how Vodacom can put up so many Wimax basestatios and Neotel struggles to cover any area properly... Surely Neotel should be the one who is more aggresive seeing as it needs customers to grow and at the rate they are growing, they will reach infant stage in about... oh... 25 odd years!
 
Nice to see some concrete details coming out of VC about their network...

Also some surprising numbers really...
 
Good grief the grammar was bad in that article.

Good to see some figures about their network coming to light.
 
Some nice info in there, although I must say, I would have guessed that there are far more base stations in the country
 
Vodacom has also embarked on a network rollout to self-provide their transmission needs towards the end of 2007
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It's 2009, was their need satisfied?
 
Great article MYBB - these are the articles people want, not 'promise of change' articles!
thanks
 
Neotel are obviously not pushing as much money as they say they can... yet everywhere, I do see "Neotel at work" :)
 
And VC has more money to use for their network upgrades... Don't think Neotel is raking in the money yet...
 
Vodacom has also embarked on a network rollout to self-provide their transmission needs towards the end of 2007
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Woah! They've discovered the secrets of time travel and they're wasting it on building telecoms infrastructure 2 years ago?!?! I hope the patent is at the very least pending.
 
friedpiggy said:
Good grief the grammar was bad in that article.

Good to see some figures about their network coming to light.
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I was just about to comment on that. A very badly written article as well.

But, it is quite nice to see the figures.
 
smokey said:
It's amazing how Vodacom can put up so many Wimax basestatios and Neotel struggles to cover any area properly... Surely Neotel should be the one who is more aggresive seeing as it needs customers to grow and at the rate they are growing, they will reach infant stage in about... oh... 25 odd years!
Click to expand...

Huh? Just estimating from the maps, Neotel has more basestations than Vodacom has WiMAX sites, and the actual coverage (just using basic RF propagation principles, and the frequency differential) must be quite a lot larger. Vodacom seems to have very little faith in its own WiMAX, given that it could have installed it on thousands of sites if it really wanted to (compare to Sprint-Nextel's WiMAX rollout on existing cell sites).

Also, Vodacom's WiMAX coverage maps are quite misleading (unless you read the fine print), and give the impression of blanket coverage where there isn't any. Neotel's current maps show quite accurately where their gaps are.

What really matters is whether Neotel is rolling out as fast as the current dominant players did when they started, which will give an indication of the level of future competition. Of course, using fibre backhaul, they won't have the kind of limitations that Vodacom is complaining of currently.
 
Towers are the key

I think that Neotels Problem may be access to Towers. VC has had a (how long has vodacom being going - I think 15 years) massive headstart on Tower building. Now if all these towers had Wimax on them, with decent backhaul and access to Seacom, then we are in another ballpark.
 
Toby said:
I think that Neotels Problem may be access to Towers.
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That seems likely. There's no incentive for the incumbents to share space, even though there are regulatory guidelines encouraging sharing. Perhaps now that Neotel is working with MTN and Vodacom on the national fibre, they'll get a better deal.
 
ads said:
Huh? Just estimating from the maps, Neotel has more basestations than Vodacom has WiMAX sites, and the actual coverage (just using basic RF propagation principles, and the frequency differential) must be quite a lot larger. Vodacom seems to have very little faith in its own WiMAX, given that it could have installed it on thousands of sites if it really wanted to (compare to Sprint-Nextel's WiMAX rollout on existing cell sites).
Click to expand...

It's not Vodacom's WiMax network, but iBurst's. Vodacom built it for them but at the end of the day it's iBurst who must decide when and where to roll it out.

Why would Vodacom want to deploy "thousands of WiMax sites"? What would the advantage be?
 
Nice article , dunno why the complainers go on about the grammer , when u have a nice article filled with lovely grammatically correct words but little info they complain as well. Just complain complain the whole day long.
 
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