MTN outlined its broadband strategy for the coming year at the Telecommunications Solutions Fair, which was held last week in Kyalami.

Although 3G is already a reality for South Africans, Sean Moore, corporate sales solutions consultant at MTN, says that the company is focusing on the deployment of Enhanced data GSM environment (Edge) across the entire country first, before it will deploy 3G. Edge is a faster version of the GSM wireless service, and is designed to deliver data at speeds of up to 384kbps, enabling the delivery of multimedia and other broadband applications to mobile handheld devices.

"We believe that we should focus on the Edge roll-out first, and wait with the deployment of 3G, which we plan to roll-out in the middle of the year. The 3G roll-out will at first just be hot spot-based, and we will not be able to provide 3G to the entire country, because of the short range of approximately 1km radius transmissions," he adds.

The reasons behind this decision, says Moore, are the same that the company gave last year when it announced its 3G readiness: there are not yet enough 3G handsets in circulation in SA. He says the company wants to offer users the most advanced technology, and thus increase customer satisfaction when it starts offering 3G.

"The longer we wait, the better the technology becomes, and if we wait it will also be much easier for us to upgrade to 4G, when the time is right.

"We are launching with Edge, which will mean only a small upgrade to our current GPRS network. Based on the number of current handsets that are GPRS-enabled, we see the deployment of Edge first and 3G later as the better option," he adds.

He notes that 97 percent of these handsets will be able to get speeds of up to 80kbps on GPRS+ when moving out of the Edge parameter in rural areas. According to Moore this is a similar approach to that taken by providers in the US, where Edge is rolled out and the Americans are "not bothering with 3G as yet". Moore says that the company has recorded speeds of up to 210kbps on Edge and 384kbps on 3G with the current system capacity.

The company is also pushing for Blackberry deployment, and, according to Moore, is piloting Blackberry with a number of its corporate customers, which the company expects will further increase the uptake of mobile solutions in the near future.