MTN SA to spend billions

Johannesburg - MTN South Africa will roll out infrastructure worth R4.6bn in its South African operation, establishing a next-generation network to serve its 17.5 million subscribers in the country.

The new network will extend the group's 2G and 3G/HSDPA coverage in the country.

Its 3G network covers 38% of the population in South Africa, while its 2G voice network reaches 98%.

"MTN will improve its network quality and reliability and modernise its network architecture," said chief technical officer Sameer Dave.

MTN must have its network ready for the 2010 Fifa World Cup, but he emphasises that the network is being built for South Africa beyond the soccer event.

MTN spent R4.8bn on capex for local infrastructure in 2008. Dave is quick to add, however, that all of this related to operational infrastructure in the ground.

Much of the budget for 2009 is being assigned to a 5 000km national fibre network being rolled out by MTN in partnership with Neotel.

Johannesburg alone represents 200km of the national network, and the city will come online for MTN in September.

Dave says data usage increased by 70% for the MTN network in 2008 (it is expected to double its current usage in 2009), while voice calls went up by 33%.

Keeping up with the growth, especially of data, on its network is a key driver for the establishment of new infrastructure.

But expanding MTN's network will not come without its challenges. Dave says that Telkom and Eskom downtime and site acquisition problems are both key issues.

MTN is also awaiting approval of its plans in relation to the new Electronic Information Act and other laws yet to be approved.

Next-generation network

To increase network transmission capacity, work will include continual improvement of the existing base stations, switches and transmission infrastructure, installing new base stations, upgrades to software and the introduction of higher speed bearers on the network for a seamless service.

During 2009, MTN is scheduled to carry out regional upgrades in six major areas across the country - Polokwane in Limpopo, New Germany in KwaZulu-Natal, Tygerberg in the Western Cape, and three areas around Johannesburg including Newlands and Germiston.

"MTN's move towards a next-generation network is an integral part of the natural evolution of being a mobile operator. The project will improve existing platforms and roll out new platforms to enhance data connectivity speeds and voice coverage," said Dave.

"The migration from the complicated network system of the past to MTN's NGN goal by 2011 comes with some challenges, but we are confident that the end benefits will far outweigh these. The improved network quality will result in better customer retention, while our customers' experience levels will improve with the increased coverage and capacity of the network."

"We are constantly wanting to improve and provide better services. Everything we did last year was towards this end," he said.

The self-provisioning of an MTN network has obvious benefits, but Dave hinted at MTN South Africa's desire to take converged fixed-line and mobile services to market in the future too.

MTN is also in partnership with competitors Vodacom and Neotel for the roll-out of a national long-haul fibre cable that will connect its network to the Seacom and EASSy east coast submarine cables. The roll-out of this cable will begin in April 2010 and is expected to be completed by September that same year.

- Fin24.com