Vodacom said on Wednesday that it has broken the 2Gbit/s barrier on its 5G network, achieving a transfer speed of 2.4Gbit/s.
That’s almost two-and-a-half times faster than the speediest fibre-to-the-home connections available in South Africa, which top out at 1Gbit/s.
The trial, on a live Vodacom site, made use of a commercially available smartphone and was conducted through the commercial base stations that serve Vodacom’s Midrand campus.
“This is a preview of how Vodacom’s recently acquired spectrum will enable true 5G capabilities and raise the bar on network performance,” said Vodacom South Africa technology director Beverly Ngwenya in a statement.
Vodacom bought access to 110MHz of spectrum at the spectrum auction in March. It paid R5.4-billion for a spectrum portfolio that includes 2×10 MHz in the 700MHz band, 1x80MHz in the 2.6GHz band and 1x10MHz in the 3.5GHz band.
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Rivals, including MTN South Africa, Telkom and Rain, also secured access to valuable spectrum assets in the auction, allowing them to build or expand their 5G services. – © 2022 NewsCentral Media
