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Johannesburg - Telecommunications giant Neotel said it is close to launching a "real" broadband offering in South Africa that will provide consumers with download speeds of up to 5Mbps.
According to Neotel's chief sales and customer service officer Stefano Mattiello, Neotel is about to launch this multi-segment wireless service based on WiMAX technology.
If this comes to fruition, the service will be 1Mbps faster than the maximum speed offered by Telkom ADSL. However, Mattiello added the peak rate of the connection may be as high as 15Mbsp, depending on how close the user is to the nearest base station.
"This type of bandwidth is unheard of in South Africa's consumer arena," Mattiello said. He explained that WiMAX is not a new technology, but that its use for consumers at these speeds is a first.
"It's almost difficult to comprehend the benefits which this will bring to the consumer market - we've heard so much about the content and applications available out there, but have not physically experienced them," he said.
Arthur Goldstuck, MD of IT research company World Wide Worx, said the offering will set a new benchmark if it can deliver on the promised speed.
"There is no dictionary definition of broadband with regards to a specific speed. The word refers to the multi-channel nature of a connection and the ability to run multiple streams over a connection," he said.
Can they deliver?
"Even 512kbps Telkom ADSL is technically broadband, much as techies hate to accept that."
According to Goldstuck, what matters is the expectation of what broadband should be.
"1Mbps and upward is generally thought to be the minimum qualification in terms of speeds, but then we're talking about a connection that truly functions at 1Mbps, not one that is merely advertised as such," he explained.
"The big question is if Neotel can deliver. It's certainly exciting that it is offering WiMax at speeds that it shouldn't be able to perform at. WiMax is continuously presented as an ADSL equivalent, but this is the first time we are seeing it presented as a 4G technology," said Goldstuck.
However, Goldstuck said caps on connections - which specify the actual amount of data allowed to be downloaded and uploaded - should also be addressed.
"At that speed you would need generous caps for it to make sense," he said.
At the time of publication, Neotel couldn't confirm the cost or cap of the connection, as well as when the service will be available.
- Fin24.com
