{"id":351613,"date":"2020-05-11T16:15:36","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T14:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=351613"},"modified":"2020-05-11T16:18:12","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T14:18:12","slug":"vodacom-uncapped-5g-not-yet-but-it-will-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/351613-vodacom-uncapped-5g-not-yet-but-it-will-come.html","title":{"rendered":"Vodacom uncapped 5G – “Not yet, but it will come”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vodacom recently launched its 5G network<\/strong><\/a> in South Africa, supporting mobile connectivity as well as a selection of fixed-wireless broadband products.<\/p>\n

The company currently only offers capped 5G products, although this will change as the technology evolves.<\/p>\n

This is according to Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub, who was speaking in an interview with MyBroadband following the publication of the company’s financial results<\/strong><\/a> for the year ended 31 March.<\/p>\n

Vodacom currently offers 5G fixed-broadband products on 24 or 36-month contracts with monthly data caps ranging from 100GB to 400GB.<\/p>\n

When asked whether Vodacom planned to launch uncapped 5G products in the future, Joosub said they did not have any plans to launch these products at the moment – but would eventually roll out uncapped products as the technology matured.<\/p>\n

“Not yet, but it will come,” he said. “It is still early days, and we still want to get used to the technology.”<\/p>\n

He noted that the knowledge gained from running a live 5G network will inform the company’s plans for 5G products and rollout going forward.<\/p>\n

“Having a live network is a lot better for the engineers to develop key learnings on it,” Joosub said.<\/p>\n

He said Vodacom’s plan for 5G in 2020 is to learn from its current deployment and understand the process required to roll out the technology to a wider area.<\/p>\n

Next year, Vodacom will begin expanding its 5G network in the same way it improved the coverage of its 4G network after it was launched.<\/p>\n

Lockdown and post-lockdown operations<\/h3>\n

When asked about the impact of the lockdown on Vodacom’s operations, Joosub said there were a number of areas which have been affected by the pandemic and the national lockdown.<\/p>\n

“The biggest impact has been on the network side in terms of increased traffic and us having to keep the business going while working remotely,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We have coped with that quite well, including making it work with 95% of our people – including contractors – working from home. That has been quite remarkable.”<\/p>\n

He added that Vodacom is prioritising the safety and security of its employees, as well as providing as much as it can for its suppliers and other partners.<\/p>\n

Vodacom has also improved its network to cope with the significant additional demand during the lockdown.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Joosub said Vodacom was preparing for life after the lockdown.<\/p>\n

The company has invested R1 billion into power security for its physical infrastructure through subsidiary IoT.nxt, preparing the company for the possible return of load-shedding as the economy comes back online.<\/p>\n

“We have invested about R1 billion in power security to make sure we have enough capacity,” Joosub said.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, Joosub said the upcoming spectrum auction would be critical for securing the spectrum needed for both 5G and 4G networks going forward.<\/p>\n

The spectrum auction is expected to take place later this year.<\/p>\n

\"Shameel<\/a>

Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub<\/p><\/div>\n

Now read: The new 5G router available from Vodacom \u2013 Nokia FastMile 5G<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vodacom’s current 5G offering includes only capped products, but this will change as the technology evolves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341028,"featured_media":350775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[35,1958,64593,41],"class_list":["post-351613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-headline","tag-shameel-joosub","tag-uncapped-5g","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351613"}],"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\/341028"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":351615,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351613\/revisions\/351615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}