Rain announced in July<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0it would suspend the sale of its fixed-LTE products through partner ISPs.<\/p>\nRain CEO Willem Roos said the strong sales of its fixed-wireless offering and the successful launch of its mobile product means they were rapidly using up the currently-available capacity on the network.<\/p>\n
Joosub said the looming network congestion means that Rain will face the same challenges as Vodacom, especially in a spectrum-starved environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is easy when you have an empty network, but when you offer aggressive deals it quickly fills up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMobile is a contended service which quickly fills up. It is possible for 10,000 or 20,000 customers to fill up your entire network with big data packages.\u201d<\/p>\n
When network congestion sets in, you have to improve your network to keep pace with the continued usage growth.<\/p>\n
Without additional spectrum, network operators like Rain will therefore have to spend a lot of money on new sites.<\/p>\n
While 5G will provide operators with more capacity, it will require many more sites because it uses much higher-frequency spectrum.<\/p>\n