{"id":36912,"date":"2011-10-26T16:01:50","date_gmt":"2011-10-26T14:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=36912"},"modified":"2011-10-27T09:17:18","modified_gmt":"2011-10-27T07:17:18","slug":"8ta-trialling-lte-in-gauteng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/telecoms\/36912-8ta-trialling-lte-in-gauteng.html","title":{"rendered":"8ta trialling LTE in Gauteng"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chief of 8ta<\/a>, Amith Maharaj<\/a>, announced today (26 October 2011) at the 2011 MyBroadband Conference held at Vodaworld in Midrand that they have started trialling Long Term Evolution (LTE)<\/a> technology.<\/p>\n

Vodacom<\/a> and MTN<\/a> both announced trials previously, with MTN issuing LTE modems to certain people in a closed test.<\/p>\n

Maharaj said they are rolling out a 50 site trial with 6 sites in Gauteng already built and their \u201cevolved packet core\u201d implemented.<\/p>\n

The trial will start in Gauteng, Maharaj said, but they plan to expand their coverage to Durban and Cape Town in the next few months.<\/p>\n

Maharaj warned that LTE is still bleeding edge and there are still a lot of questions unanswered, such as the device ecosystem, pricing models, QoS parameters.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuite frankly the backhaul is the key,\u201d Maharaj continued. He explained that while they are playing with the technology a lot is happening in the background.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking too bold and too early a move could find you with your fingers burnt,\u201d Maharaj said.<\/p>\n

\"Amith

Amith Maharaj<\/p><\/div>\n

Maharaj also went on to list five reasons on \u201cWhy LTE?\u201d:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Increased capacity at low cost.<\/li>\n
  2. No cell breathing so you get a fixed cell footprint.<\/li>\n
  3. Improved customer experience.<\/li>\n
  4. Different commercial models.<\/li>\n
  5. Good substitute for ADSL type services, could possibly offer video on demand.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Building on the point of using LTE as an ADSL replacement, as well as general wireline replacement, Maharaj referred to earlier statements by Telkom\u2019s Steve Lewis<\/a> who said that Telkom is plagued by copper theft.<\/p>\n

    Lewis said that Telkom can\u2019t always replace the copper and have to offer customers an alternative means to connect.<\/p>\n

    LTE is definitely such an alternative, Maharaj said, as it offers the quality of service users have come to expect of ADSL and can offer guaranteed speeds of above 10Mbps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    8ta has revealed that they have joined Vodacom, MTN, and Cell C in trialling Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile broadband technology<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":35398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,14,3],"tags":[473,469,35,2490,6114,183,6116,6112,109],"class_list":["post-36912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadband","category-cellular","category-telecoms","tag-8ta","tag-amith-maharaj","tag-headline","tag-lte","tag-lte-trial","tag-network-infrastructure","tag-network-trials","tag-steve-lewis","tag-telkom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36912"}],"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=36912"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36914,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36912\/revisions\/36914"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}