Neotel network growth continues
Neotel recently launched their CDMA-based NeoConnect consumer services in Cape Town and Durban. This comes only weeks after launching these offerings in Gauteng.
Consumers have been keen to see Neotel enter the residential telecoms market to bring much needed competition to Telkom, but the company pointed out that network rollout is an expensive and time consuming exercise.
Neotel has been aggressively expanding its fibre network in metropolitan areas, and at the same time has been increasing its DCMA footprint in Johannesburg, Midrand, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban.
Neotel currently has 62 live CDMA sites of which 49 are in the Gauteng area. The coverage provided by these CDMA towers can differ significantly depending on the location of the site and the terrain itself, but Neotel said that to ensure great quality of service they prefer customers to be within a 1.5km to 2.5km radius of the tower.
Neotel is using 800MHz spectrum for its DCMA deployment, and this frequency means far better coverage and in-building penetration than Vodacom and MTN’s 2.1GHz HSDPA services.
Neotel has also recently deployed a fixed WiMax network on 3.5GHz using Telsima’s 802.16d WiMax equipment. The company will use this network to provide 2Mbps last-mile connectivity.
Neotel has, however, indicated that this was mainly aimed at the enterprise market, and that 2.6GHz spectrum was very necessary for it to expand its WiMax operations into the SMME and consumer markets.
The company is also using its 10.5GHz spectrum in partnership with Cambridge Broadband VectaStar to provide enterprise clients with wireless access services ranging in speed between 4Mbps and 10Mbps.
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