South Africa’s leading telecoms operator Vodacom has said that it has broken the 2Gbit/s barrier on its 5G network, achieving a transfer speed of 2.4Gbit/s. That means that it was almost two-and-a-half times faster than the speediest fibre-to-the-home connections available in South Africa, which top out at 1Gbit/s.

The trial, on a live Vodacom site, made use of a commercially available smartphone and was conducted through the commercial base stations that serve Vodacom’s Midrand campus.

“This is a preview of how Vodacom’s recently acquired spectrum will enable true 5G capabilities and raise the bar on network performance,” said Vodacom South Africa technology director Beverly Ngwenya in a statement.

Vodacom bought access to 110MHz of spectrum at the spectrum auction in March. It paid R5.4-billion for a spectrum portfolio that includes 2×10 MHz in the 700MHz band, 1x80MHz in the 2.6GHz band and 1x10MHz in the 3.5GHz band.

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Rivals, including MTN South Africa, Telkom and Rain, also secured access to valuable spectrum assets in the auction, allowing them to build or expand their 5G services. 

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry