MTN focusses on broadband experience
Future mobile telecommunications requirements will rely heavily on the ability for providers to utilise power from non-traditional, cost-effective energy resources and the ability to develop faster and more reliable networks, MTN said in a statement released today.
“MTN has spent R14 billion upgrading its network since 2007. This means that MTN’s network is perfectly geared to optimise the performance of smartphone devices,” said Lambo Kanagaratnam, newly-appointed chief technology officer (CTO) at MTN South Africa.
According MTN’s network has been independently rated as one of the top five networks of its kind in the world by Huawei and Ericsson.
“Furthermore, MTN is modernising its base station equipment, paying attention to energy efficiency by deploying cellular towers using renewable energy resources. MTN already has approximately 150 base stations with fibre access and hopes to increase this number five-fold in 2011. MTN will use both its own fibre infrastructure and that of fibre partners to achieve this,” he adds.
MTN is aggressively expanding transmission of its 21Mbps HSPA+ radio and fibre network, and is currently testing 42Mbps HSPA+ on a live network in Sandton. All MTN’s switches in Gauteng are currently connected via fibre, while the Cape Town and Durban switches are connected via fibre partners.
According to MTN, connectivity to their network remains affordable, with prices ranging from 19c per MB when customers take out a 2GB contract for R389 per month or an Uncapped Lite contract for R749 per month with no limit to the amount of data that can be used.
Maximum speeds on Uncapped Lite are throttled to 128Kbps after a fair usage limit of 3GB is reached, however.
All MTN’s data packages have a flat rate, which means customers pay the same rate per MB whether they’re in bundle or out of bundle. Customers also have one month carry-over of un-used data.
InternetOnTV
MTN said that they introduced their Qualcomm-made Kayak InternetOnTV device in an effort to bring the Internet to lower income households.
The device connects to a television using a normal RCA composite video connector, or to a computer monitor with a standard VGA connector. It comes bundled with a prepaid starter pack that is set to per-second billing by default, as well as a USB keyboard and mouse.
“MTN wants consumers to feel more comfortable with the internet and embrace it as a tool that makes their lives easier, gives them instant access to information and connects them socially in a way they never thought possible,” said Kanagaratnam.
“With the MTN InternetOnTV unit, families can now access the internet, make calls and send SMS in the comfort of their home at a very affordable cost. There’s no need for expensive computer equipment, no need to leave home and it won’t break the bank,” he added.
Opera Mini
At the end of last year, MTN and Opera Software announced that they joined forces to introduce a co-branded version of Opera Mini.
“The introduction of the co-branded version of Opera Mini marks a key step in MTN South Africa’s small-screen strategy of enabling an enhanced internet user experience on mobile phones,” said Kanagaratnam.
The Opera Mini mobile browser offers many of the features from the Opera desktop browser, such as tabs, bookmarks, password manager and Speed Dial.
Its compression technology can reduce data consumption by up to 90 percent, according to Opera. This has the potential to not only increase the speed at which web content is downloaded, but also decrease data usage costs.
Existing Opera Mini 5 users subscribing to MTN South Africa will be automatically updated to the special co-branded version when they next run Opera Mini, MTN said.
Internet on your TV in South Africa
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