Telkom plans to showcase 4.5G wireless broadband at its annual Southern Africa Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (Satnac), taking place at Fancourt in George next week.
Telkom said it is showing off the technology as part of its roadmap for eventually deploying next-generation 5G services.
Alphonzo Samuels, MD of Telkom’s Openserve division and chairman of Satnac, claimed in a statement that it’s the first time that 4.5G mobile technology has been launched commercially in South Africa using licensed spectrum bands.
“Telkom has deployed an LTE three downlink component carrier (3 CC DL) network at Fancourt,” Samuels explained. “The network deployed is a commercially live, carrier-aggregated 3G and LTE network supporting newer generation commercially available devices.”
In the same statement, Telkom CEO for consumer retail Attila Vitai, said it is not a demonstration network and is the first one deployed by the company in this configuration. “This technology will remain in operation at Fancourt after the conference,” he said.
“Using commercially available devices, Telkom will demonstrate bandwidths in excess of 260Mbit/s to smartphones, which shows the commitment to implement newer standards and technologies once they become commercially available.”
Although LTE carrier aggregation has already been deployed in Telkom’s mobile network since the launch of LTE-Advanced technology, the operator said its intention is to start enabling carrier aggregation across frequency bands in future as part of the network evolution towards 4.5 and 5G networks.
“4.5G is a natural evolution of the 3GPP standards and enables operators to protect their investment by using existing infrastructure and spectrum, to offer higher data rates and improved user experience using commercially available devices,” said Vitai. — © 2016 NewsCentral Media
