3.6 Mbps HSDPA here soon

ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa), 22 January 2008

MTN and Vodacom have indicated that they will launch 3.6 Mbps High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) offerings ‘soon’ despite problems currently experienced with a lack of sufficient backhaul bandwidth in South Africa.

Mobile Broadband users will be glad to know that the long wait for 3.6 Mbps HSDPA might soon be over. This comes despite the fact that Telkom has so far managed to slow both mobile providers down by not supplying them with enough or sufficient backhaul bandwidth. According to Wikipedia ‘…backhauling is concerned with transporting traffic between distributed sites (typically access points) and more centralised points of presence’. Wikipedia gives the connection of ‘…wireless base stations to the corresponding base station controllers’ as an example of bachhauling in telecommunications. Backhaul bandwidth must therefore be in reference to the maximum amount of information that are transportable along a channel‘…between distributed sites (typically access points) and more centralised points of presence’.

Both MTN and Vodacom are busy with fiber network roll outs in order to break their dependency on Telkom for backhaul bandwidth. MTN already has a fiber network in the Rosebank and Sandton areas in Johannesburg which is fully operational.

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