IS, Rain offer commercial LTE-A to South African ISPs

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IS will act as Rain’s ‘open access’ go-to-market partner for its fixed LTE-A product. Targeting local ISPs whose customers will benefit from fibre-like mobile connectivity, the companies anticipate that offering competitively-priced access to LTE-A will present new growth opportunities.

“Access to LTE-A on the Rain network is an attractive proposition for ISPs that have identified LTE-A as a driver of business sustainability, through an expanded product portfolio and infrastructure savings,” says Murray Steyn, executive head: wholesale at IS.

“As IS is already integrated into all existing telcos, with a sophisticated billing and management platform that allows ISPs to administer the packages they market to customers, adding LTE-A to their offering will demonstrate their responsiveness to new technologies and consumer demand.”

An attractive alternative

Where there is high-density mobile coverage, LTE-A offers ISPs and their customers distinct advantages over a wired network like ADSL or fibre, particularly for ISPs that wish to deliver services to customers quickly with minimal disruption during installation. As network coverage improves and gigabit LTE becomes a reality, mobile broadband is increasingly an attractive alternative to traditional broadband connectivity.

“As we invest in the significant undertaking of deploying a new national LTE-A network, we’ve partnered with IS to deliver our fixed wireless broadband service, ‘Rain to the Home’ (RttH) as a Fibre or DSL alternative. We call this ‘fibre in the sky’”, says Duncan Simpson-Craib, CEO of Rain.

“As we progress beyond 3G and 4G, there is increasing potential for mobile connectivity to profoundly change how we work, communicate, and socialise,” says Saki Missaikos, managing director of IS.