Telkom looks poised to become the third South African telecoms operator to launch a mobile 5G network within the next few weeks.<\/p>\n
MyBroadband observed four speed tests registered to Telkom’s 5G network on the MyBroadband Speed Test app on Wednesday, 12 October 2022.<\/p>\n
The tests were linked to two smartphones \u2014 a Xiaomi Redmi Note 9T and Vivo V25 \u2014 in the Highveld area in Centurion, Gauteng.<\/p>\n
Notably, this is also where the Telkom Park campus is located, suggesting employees may have conducted tests as part of a limited trial.<\/p>\n
The Redmi Note 9T recorded the highest speed, measuring 266.77Mbps download and 45.44Mbps upload. That same test recorded a latency of 12ms.<\/p>\n
We tried to find Telkom’s 5G network with a Samsung Galaxy S22+ but could not pick it up after searching around the Highveld area. Telkom’s campus is not open to the public, and we could therefore only scour its perimeter.<\/p>\n
A Telkom spokesperson said the network operator would announce more information on its 5G plans during an event “later this month”.<\/p>\n
MyBroadband understands that Telkom plans to hold an event on 27 October 2022.<\/p>\n
Telkom would not confirm whether this event would mark its 5G network launch, or if it would merely announce the official launch date.<\/p>\n
Telkom has been testing its 5G network with closed-access sites in selected parts of the country since at least February 2021<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n In August 2021<\/strong><\/a>, the operator told MyBroadband it would drastically ramp up these sites from 10 to 60 locations by August 2022.<\/p>\n None of these sites have been available to regular customers, as they were being optimised for a commercial rollout.<\/p>\n Telkom has already upgraded its mobile core network to support non-standalone 5G radio technology, which uses 4G for control functions like signalling.<\/p>\n Telkom told MyBroadband it expects 5G access on its network to complement its LTE-Advanced connectivity and said it could account for 25-40% of connections by 2026.<\/p>\n Should the operator launch its 5G network later this month, it would come more than two years after Vodacom and MTN rolled out their mobile 5G networks.<\/p>\n The two biggest South African operators have expanded their coverage significantly since that time and have seen speeds improve significantly.<\/p>\n MTN, in particular, ramped up its rollout in 2022 and covered around 20% of the South African population with 5G as of June 2022. It is aiming for 25% coverage by the end of the year.<\/p>\n Vodacom recently achieved an astounding 2.4Gbps download speed<\/strong><\/a> on a Samsung Galaxy S22+ with carrier aggregation technology that allowed it to dedicate a massive chunk of radio frequency spectrum to a single device.<\/p>\n MyBroadband’s own testing on a Galaxy S22+ saw us hitting 1.8Gbps on Fast.com, while a Vodacom engineer achieved 2.0Gbps on their Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra.<\/p>\n Rain, which has extensive 5G coverage for fixed-location customers across South Africa, is also planning to roll out a 5G mobile network<\/a> <\/strong>within the coming year.<\/p>\n The operator has also tabled a proposal to Telkom’s board to buy Rain in exchange for shares.<\/p>\n It believes such a transaction could have the potential to create a strong third mobile network operator and 5G “powerhouse” in South Africa.<\/p>\n The launch of Telkom’s 5G network appears imminent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":411514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62528],"tags":[57360,35,42,42744,43716,645,109,71744,46786,41,21201],"class_list":["post-464417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5g","tag-5g-networks","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-mybroadband-speed-test-app","tag-rain","tag-samsung","tag-telkom","tag-telkom-5g","tag-vivo","tag-vodacom","tag-xiaomi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464417"}],"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\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":464477,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464417\/revisions\/464477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Telkom will be third in mobile 5G, fourth overall<\/h2>\n
\nNow read: Major 5G vendor reveals plans for South African rollout<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"