Cell C recently rebranded and rethink its strategy in the South Africa mobile space and made it clear that they are ready to take on the bigger cellphone operators MTN and Vodacom.
With the relaunch of Cell C’s branding the company also announced that they will be launching a brand new 4G network capable of broadband speeds of up to 21Mbps.
Cell C is already advertising its new HSPA+ packages on its website, currently seems like there will be 2 packages available, one with a maximum speed of 7.2 Mbps and another with a maximum speed of 21.6 Mbps.
The two broadband offerings from Cell C comes in way bellow that of MTN and Vodacom working out R63 and R50 per GB respectively.
- 7.2 Mbps capable modem with 2GB worth of data every month for 12 months at only R1499
- 21.6 Mbps capable modem with 5GB worth of data every month for 12 months at only R2999
Availability of these new Cell C broadband packages will be made public later this week.
HSPA+ is *not* 4G.
Just putting that out there.
Thanks for clearing that up Extremist, but I did not say it is
Just said Cell C is building a 4G network.
Thanks for the comment, cool blog btw.
Thanks! I don’t keep it nearly as up-to-date as yours, sadly.
Cell C also can’t be building a 4G network as none of the 4G standards are actually finalised yet. Check out the Wikipedia article on 4G for a primer.
4G basically only encompasses WiMAX 802.16m and LTE Advanced and neither standard is finalised just yet.
LTE and WiMAX 802.16e-2005 are sometimes branded as 4G but a more technically correct term is “pre-4G technology.”
@the extremist
The EVO is a 4G phone available where available in the USA on the Sprint network.
Manufactures were rolling out 802.11n wireless devices long before the final spec was ratified. Which is a pain when the wrong device meets the wrong router, but if a company in the industry can gain an advantage on another before standard bodies make up their minds then that is what happens.
First to market gets all the mindshare.
The EVO might say it’s 4G, but Sprint and HTC are also abusing the term. They’re also picking up flak for abusing the term.
The phone’s data service runs on Sprint’s WiMAX 802.16e-2005 network, *not* some early version of a 4G technology.
Maximum reported speeds on WiMAX networks is around 40Mbps, but they have a theoretical speed of over 100Mbps at least.
HSPA+ on the other hand has a theoretical limit at 40Mbps, with an upgrade to 80Mbps in the works.
That’s a far cry from the 100Mbps at 350km/h and 1000Mbps at walking speed specs for 4G, let alone all the other more technical requirements.
> “First to market gets all the mindshare”
I agree 100% and it’s therein that the problem lies. Operators are claiming to be the first to provide next generation technologies when they’re really providing updated versions of the current generation technologies.
That should be good enough for marketing teams but no, they have to take it into the realm of the blatantly wrong and deceptive.
Cell C provided the first HSPA+ network on 900 MHz in Africa to PE today. Why was that not a good enough angle?
They’re offering a pure HSPA+ network rather than a hybrid GPRS/0.3/1.8/3.6/7.2/14.4/21.1 network. Why was that not good enough?
They’re offering it at a *really* cheap price. Also not good enough.
No, someone who didn’t bother to do their homework properly latched onto the “4G” term and is slowly rendering it meaningless.
cell c has issued this as a marketing strategy, it actually means 4th generation and the speed says 7.2mbps but is actually super slow.
my cellphone connects on edge faster than my modem…!
and as for picking up flack, i think that they should re-imburse all those that purchased this device as this is false advertising, and it should be taken up frther.
i spent my last few rands buying this thing expecting it to perform and now i am disgusted