{"id":145207,"date":"2015-11-09T14:56:11","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T12:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=145207"},"modified":"2015-11-09T14:57:06","modified_gmt":"2015-11-09T12:57:06","slug":"iburst-to-test-lte-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wireless\/145207-iburst-to-test-lte-network.html","title":{"rendered":"iBurst to test LTE network"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On 4 November 2015,\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business\/144749-new-iburst-ceo-and-plans-announced.html\">Multisource completed its acquisition of WBS<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 the parent company of iBurst and Broadlink \u2013 following approval from the Competition Commission and Icasa.<\/p>\n<p>Duncan Simpson-Craib has been appointed as Group CEO, while Phumlani Moholi will head up the company\u2019s network.<\/p>\n<p>Multisource said it is planning to \u201cdevelop the existing businesses and network to leverage the valuable spectrum licence that WBS holds\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Simpson-Craib told MyBroadband they plan to spend the coming months testing a small LTE network, and defining a strategy going forward.<\/p>\n<p>The network will make use of the company\u2019s 1,800MHz spectrum, which is suitable for LTE networks.<\/p>\n<p>Simpson-Craib said it would be ideal to move the current iBurst subscribers to an LTE network. However, it is not a certainty at this stage.<\/p>\n<p>He said a full pricing review will happen before any decisions are made regarding the existing iBurst customers. \u201cWe will obviously try and look after the existing customer base,\u201d said Simpson-Craib.<\/p>\n<p>Broadlink, which is a profitable part of the WBS stable, will continue to be run by Mike Brown.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCurrent Broadlink services will remain, but we will be doing full business reviews for all group companies which will hopefully lead to new and exciting offerings,\u201d said Simpson-Craib.<\/p>\n<p>iBurst also has 2,600MHz spectrum, but there are currently no plans to make use of this asset.<\/p>\n<p>Simpson-Craib said they are not talking to any mobile operators regarding a spectrum sharing deal. \u201cRegulations do not allow for spectrum sharing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"related\">More on the Multisource-WBS deal<\/h3>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business\/144749-new-iburst-ceo-and-plans-announced.html\">New iBurst CEO and plans announced<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wireless\/144267-south-africa-may-get-a-new-lte-operator.html\"><strong>South Africa may get a new LTE operator<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business\/144257-iburst-sale-to-multisource-gets-green-light.html\"><strong>iBurst sale to Multisource gets green light<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>iBurst\u2019s new CEO Duncan Simpson-Craib says they will spend the coming months testing a small LTE network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":131264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,13],"tags":[5532,33679,35,683,2490,8977,7521,33677,3572],"class_list":["post-145207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-wireless","tag-broadlink","tag-duncan-simpson-craib","tag-headline","tag-iburst","tag-lte","tag-mike-brown","tag-multisource","tag-phumlani-moholi","tag-wbs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145207"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145309,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145207\/revisions\/145309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}