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Johannesburg - South Africa’s third largest mobile network Cell C will launch its LTE service in the Western Cape on December 1.
This comes after Cell C announced earlier this year that its LTE network had gone live in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.
Cell C is South Africa’s third largest mobile network with 22 million subscribers but it was the last among major operators to launch an LTE network in the country. Vodacom and MTN launched their LTE networks in 2012.
But Cell C is now ramping up its LTE network across the country.
“The first phase of 280 sites across the Western Cape is now complete and ready for customers to enjoy,” said Cell C chief executive officer Jose Dos Santos in a statement.
Cell C says it has invested R2bn in its LTE network this year. The company further plans to invest another R6bn over the next two years to bolster the roll-out and extend more parts of Gauteng, Kwazulu-Natal and the Western Cape.
Capital investments will also be made in an additional 1 600 fibre links, said Cell C.
Meanwhile, the company’s announcement about its LTE roll-out comes after Telkom announced last week that it’s abandoned talks to buy Cell C from majority shareholder Dubai-based Oger Telecom.
Telkom said that an agreement wasn’t reached on the value of the proposed transaction. It was reported earlier in the year that Telkom wanted to pay R14bn for Oger’s stake in Cell C but that Oger Telecom wanted R22bn.
