WBS planning LTE network in South Africa

[rpm]

WBS planning LTE network in SA

iBurst holding company WBS says they will roll out an LTE network by mid-2012

 

[saffakanera]

1500 jobs? Cool man, where do we sign up?

 

[saliehendricks]

So many words...but please do give us some sort of indication of how much it will cost a customer? Are we getting:
- 50Mbps speeds, 10Gb for R1000pm?
- 75Mbps speeds, 3Gb for R1000pm?
- 100Mpbs, 2Gb for R1000pm?

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Competition is good.





Where's Sentech and NoeTel?

 

[BBSA]

Pity their accounts department is from hell, else one could have look at this.

 

[eltherza]

Competition is good.

Yeah, and hopefully this accelerates the rollout from the other ISPs as well.

 

[Ockie]

Yeah, and hopefully this accelerates the rollout from the other ISPs as well.

It is difficult for the other operators cause they dont have spare spectrum really. Iburst is sitting with 1800 and spectrum doing nothing....untill now. The other MNO's spectrum is tied up in the voice networks and they are still waiting for ICASA to pull its finger out and allocate spectrum in the 2600 to them.

Anyone know what spectrum the Iburst network runs on?

 

[eltherza]

It is difficult for the other operators cause they dont have spare spectrum really. Iburst is sitting with 1800 and spectrum doing nothing....untill now. The other MNO's spectrum is tied up in the voice networks and they are still waiting for ICASA to pull its finger out and allocate spectrum in the 2600 to them.

Anyone know what spectrum the Iburst network runs on?

According to http://manypossibilities.net/spectrum/

iburst is 2.55Ghz -> 2.56GHz with 1 x 15Mhz

WBS has more scattered around the spectrum (i'm no expert in this stuff, no idea what this all means)

 

[Ockie]

I assume this LTE network will be used to provision data only and not voice like a typical MNO?

 

[Ockie]

Sjoe...a operator announces that they are about to roll out a LTE network and hardly any responses???

 

[Bern]

@ ocleroux - probably just can't believe it and are waiting ofr some disclaimer or retraction...

I think we all just waiting for some more details to see what it means, LTE, ok, but get more specific. Which frequency bands specifically, how much total throughput is possible, where and when will it be available and so forth. Perhaps a running test site to be sure they are actually going ahead?

 

[Ockie]

@ ocleroux - probably just can't believe it and are waiting ofr some disclaimer or retraction...

I think we all just waiting for some more details to see what it means, LTE, ok, but get more specific. Which frequency bands specifically, how much total throughput is possible, where and when will it be available and so forth. Perhaps a running test site to be sure they are actually going ahead?

Oh ok. Makes sense

 

[Randux]

There's that term again '4G'

 

[Randux]

Goodluck to 'em I hope it all goes as planed

 

[vzta22]

There's that term again '4G'

Right, unless they are building LTE-Advanced network

 

[Bern]

There's that term again '4G'

Right, unless they are building LTE-Advanced network

I expect they will start with LTE and have an upgrade path for LTE-Advanced, so maybe they need to call it 4Gish?