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Super high speed mobile network launched

Cape Town - Singapore became the first country to have access to the highest speed mobile broadband available with the commercial launch of a 4G LTE-Advanced network.

While South Africans can generally expect top real-world speeds of around 25mbps on LTE (Long Term Evolution), the Singapore network boasts speeds of 300mbps.

"The service will be available from 23 August 2014 when SingTel launches the Samsung Galaxy S5 4G+, the first handset globally to be compatible with 4G LTE-Advanced networks. Another compatible smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy Alpha 4G+, will be available from SingTel in September 2014," said Ericsson, which built the commercial network.

Asia leads the world in the rollout of high speed mobile networks and South Korea has already demonstrated 5G network speeds, though that is some years away from commercial deployment.

It is estimated that in countries like Singapore, South Korea and Japan, LTE will become the dominant network by 2017.

Data demand

South Korea's plans to build a 5G mobile network is estimated to cost around $1.5bn, roughly the equivalent of the mammoth SKA project being built in the Northern Cape province and Australia.

As demand for data grows, the allocation of spectrum is critical to rolling out high speed networks. In SA, the development of LTE has been hamstrung by a lack of political will on spectrum allocation, particularly in the 800MHz band.

The 4G LTE-Advanced network is expected to give consumers a more rich internet experience and also spur online services like e-commerce.

"We are constantly enhancing our networks with the latest technologies to provide our customers with the best possible experience for today’s increasingly bandwidth-hungry applications," said Tay Yeow Lian, SingTel's managing director of Networks.

The company collaborated with Samsung and Ericsson to build the network which covers 55% of the island, whereas in SA, only 39% of the country is currently covered by 3G and LTE.


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