{"id":19820,"date":"2011-04-19T18:54:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-19T16:54:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-06-13T15:47:05","modified_gmt":"2011-06-13T13:47:05","slug":"cell-c-hspa-population-coverage-at-43","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/19820-cell-c-hspa-population-coverage-at-43.html","title":{"rendered":"Cell C HSPA+ population coverage at 43%"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When <a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadband\/14917-Cell-officially-launches-Mbps-HSPA-service.html\" target=\"_blank\">Cell C first launched their 900MHz HSPA+ network in Port Elizabeth<\/a> at the beginning of September 2010 its CEO Lars Reichelt made some bold promises.<\/p>\n<p>The recent upgrade to the base stations serving Port Elizabeth from 21 Mbps to 42 Mbps was one such promise, as Reichelt said in September 2010 that Cell C was in a position to upgrade PE in 6 to 8 months after its launch date.<\/p>\n<p>Although two weeks late, Cell C made good on their promise.<\/p>\n<p>Reichelt also promised that 99% of the Port Elizabeth metropolitan area population would be covered in future, up from the 65% coverage when Cell C first started.<\/p>\n<p>According to Reichelt, Cell C have delivered on this promise.\u00a0 They now cover the full PE metropolitan area and some of the surrounding region, which they peg at 115% population coverage.<\/p>\n<p><strong>97% population coverage by end 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The boldest promise of them all was that <a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadband\/14967-Cell-broadband-network-What-expect.html\" target=\"_blank\">Cell C&#8217;s HSPA+ mobile data network would reach 97% of South Africans<\/a> by the end of 2011.<\/p>\n<p>Reichelt broke this target down into shorter term goals, explaining that Cell C planned to cover 34% of the South African population by the end of 2010 and 67% of the population by mid-2011.<\/p>\n<p>Cell C&#8217;s goals are very ambitious when one considers that it took Vodacom five years to provide 3G coverage for 50% of South Africa&#8217;s population while MTN only achieved 48% population coverage for its 3G network in August 2010.<\/p>\n<p>At the beginning of 2011 Cell C said that it covered 40% of South Africa&#8217;s population, having reached its goal of 34% coverage by the end of 2010.<\/p>\n<p>Ron Reddick, Cell C&#8217;s chief technology officer, revealed that they now cover 43% of South Africa&#8217;s population with their HSPA+ mobile broadband network.<\/p>\n<p>This coverage is achieved through 1,550 active HSPA base stations of a total of 2,500, Reichelt said. The non-active sites are still in testing.<\/p>\n<p>Reddick said that they expect a spike in coverage in the coming months as fibre used for backhaul from their sites comes online. Once the fibre is in place they can commission a large number of sites at once, Reddick said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cell C CEO Lars Reichelt has revealed that their HSPA+ mobile broadband network now reaches 43% of the South African population<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cellular"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19820"}],"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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26647,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19820\/revisions\/26647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}