Telkom to launch 4.5G service next week

Telkom will unveil 4.5G technology at its annual Southern Africa Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (SATNAC).

SATNAC is from 4 to 7 September in George, and will focus on “Broadband Evolution – Unlocking the Internet of Things”.

On its journey to 5G, Telkom has deployed an LTE three-downlink component carrier (3 CC DL) network at the conference.

It said the network is commercially live and supports newer-generation devices that are on sale.

Attila Vitai, Telkom’s head of consumer retail, said this is not a demonstration network and that it is the first one deployed by the company in this configuration.

It will remain in operation at Fancourt in George following the conference.

“Using commercially-available devices, Telkom will demonstrate bandwidths in excess of 260Mbps to smartphones,” said Vitai.

Although LTE carrier aggregation has already been deployed by Telkom, its plan is to enable carrier aggregation across frequency bands 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.”

This article was originally published on MyBroadband.