Rural broadband: why it's so hard to do
16 Mar 2012
The lack of fibre-optic transmission networks outside SA's main urban centres could prove a huge stumbling block to rolling out next-generation long-term evolution (LTE) networks in rural areas and add significant costs for operators wanting to meet roll-out obligations for these networks.
Richard Morse, group technology executive at Dimension Data subsidiary Plessey, says there is a desperate need for more fibre infrastructure in rural areas because microwave technology is simply not good enough to support the sorts of speeds and latencies that consumers will demand from LTE networks, which will eventually offer download speeds in excess of 1Gbit/s.
"When you start thinking about how you're going to get that data back from multiple towers to a central location, you realise that new [fibre] infrastructure has to be built," Morse says.
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Source: TechCentral
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About Duncan McLeod: @mcleodd
Award-wining Duncan McLeod is the founder and editor of TechCentral (wwwTechCentral.co.za, @TechCentral]]), South Africa's latest technology news site offering breaking news, in-depth analysis and opinion that launched in September 2009. Before that, he was associate editor at the Financial Mail/FM. Contact Duncan on email duncan at techcentral dot co dot za and follow him on Twitter at @mcleodd.
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