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8ta to double its presence

June 20, 2011 2:46 pm 0 comments

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Telkom’s mobile arm, 8ta, today revealed that it will increase the number of its base stations in operation.

The company which currently have 25% of national coverage aims to almost double its base station presence to between 35% to 40% by 2012.

Currently the company has 942 base stations and aims to have 2000 by the first quarter of next year. Furthermore the company also highlighted that its high speed broadband is finally live but customers will not see the benefits yet.

“At the moment the 21mbit is not available for our customers yet but the average speeds are between 7 and 12mbit,”says Zoltin Miklos, Telkom data network executive.

While 8ta says its immediate plans are not faster networks but customer satisfaction, it will make its presence felt where it currently operates.

“We will still rely on MTN to provide us with their infrastructure in rural areas while we build our networks in metros,” said Brett Nash, 8ta executive for radio access networks.

The company further said that unlike other companies that build single mode base stations, they have opted to do the opposite.

“We have decided to have dual technology deployment bases that has both 2G and 3G capabilities instead of separates,” the company said.

In addition 8ta said 70% of its network was co-located with other networks at the moment. Nash also added that their network uses software definable radios making it easier for them to upgrade sites without difficulties.

Introduced in October last year, 8ta is Telkom’s answer to its declining profits and a potential money spinner. The company has over 1 million customers in SA and says it hopes to get even better.

The company said one of its applications that makes its customer experience better was real time communication.

“We have real-time communication available to our clients, data billing, voice and sms notification of available data is communicated in real time,” 8ta says.

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