With LTE being a very hot topic in the tech world at the moment, Jose Dos Santos, CCO of South African mobile operator Cell C, said he would like to see LTE available throughout the entire country. “What we want to see is a national rollout of LTE, and we want to see more devices being made available to the public. If you can’t connect fibre to a base station, you won’t experience true fibre,” he said during a conference in Johannesburg.
With all the challenges that LTE poses, Dos Santos added that 2015 will be about the time the general public will see a full LTE network.
“The industry has this ludicrous idea that we need to auction off spectrum. We have to think about a wholesale model of LTE, and we should learn from the mistakes that occurred when 3G was rolled out in South Africa.”
Building on the future, Dos Santos said that Cell C will have a number of new innovations available in the near future. “Cell C launched a bunch of new innovations and flat rates for call charges. We are in the process of building our LTE network and will make an announcement before the end of the year. But exciting stuff will be coming from Cell C in the future.”
It has been widely rumoured in the media that Cell C will also announce their LTE offerings at a media briefing on 18 October. “No-one has rung the bell for the first round of the LTE fight yet, but it’s officially now underway,” he concluded.
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor
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