Rain, which on Thursday took the wraps off its first mobile-focused offerings, has signed a roaming agreement with Vodacom to provide gap coverage where it hasn’t yet been able to expand its network.
Rain revealed on Thursday evening that it was launching a mobile offering, called Rain Mobile, in the process expanding into voice services and becoming more of a full-service telecommunications provider. Until now, the company has provided only data services for smartphones and a wireless service for use in homes as an alternative to fibre.
It said its mobile coverage is national, though it didn’t say whether it was roaming on another network to achieve this. Rain has now confirmed to TechCentral that it has signed a roaming agreement with Vodacom to plug gaps in its coverage – mainly outside South Africa’s bigger cities and towns.
“As you will remember, last year we participated in the spectrum auction with the specific goal of acquiring sub-1GHz spectrum, which would allow us to establish a national coverage layer,” a Rain spokeswoman told TechCentral on Friday in response to e-mailed questions.
“We successfully obtained 20MHz of 700MHz spectrum, which we are now using to roll out our 700MHz network on top of our existing network,” the spokeswoman said.
“However, in certain regions of the country, the deployment of our network has been delayed due to the conversion of TV from analogue to digital. To address these coverage gaps, we have entered into a roaming agreement with Vodacom. This enables us to provide coverage in these areas where our network is yet to be deployed.”
RainOne
Rain’s new offering, called rainOne, costs R559/month (with no lock-in) and offers “unlimited” 5G home Wi-Fi (up to 30Mbit/s), plus free monthly calls and data for two phones, each with 2GB of data and 60 minutes of voice calls. Consumers can then bolt on additional data and voice bundles as they require. They can also buy faster 5G speeds for the home broadband solution.
“Customers with rainOne will be able to seamlessly port their existing number and use Rain Mobile as their primary Sim, with national 4G mobile coverage,” Rain said.
“The convergence of a home and mobile voice and data offerings in one affordable plan is an innovation we are confident will appeal to South Africans. We recognise that our customers have family members, so with rainOne we are catering not only for their need to access the internet from home, but also outside on their mobile devices,” said CEO Brandon Leigh in a statement. – © 2023 NewsCentral Media
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