Cell C has demonstrated download speeds across an LTE Advanced network at the AfricaCom trade show in Cape Town of as much as 138Mbit/s.
The operator can’t, however, deploy the technology commercially without access to additional radio frequency spectrum, it said.
To date, only Telkom has launched commercial LTE-A services in South Africa, utilising a large chunk of bandwidth it has access to in the 2,3GHz band.
Vodacom has also demonstrated LTE-A technology in action — at its campus in Midrand — but has not deployed it in the field, also because of a lack of spectrum.
“Huawei and Cell C demonstrated the high-speed experience on many different devices by showing live high-definition video streamed on its LTE-A trial site,” Cell C said in a statement.
For the test, Huawei deployed its “LampSite” indoor coverage solution, which is suited to serving high-speed applications such as video.
The solution uses “carrier aggregation” technology, which accounts for the high speeds Cell C was able to show off at AfricaCom. Carrier aggregation allows for two different frequency bands to be joined together for faster downlink speeds.
As these technologies develop, there will be more bands that we can bring together, bringing faster services to customers, said Cell C CEO Jose Dos Santos in the statement. — © 2015 NewsCentral Media
