South African company to spearhead network provision in South Sudan
Airspan Networks Inc has announced that RCS-Communication Ltd has selected its solution for a 4G WiMAX network deployment. According to the company, Air4G is a dual platform 4G base station enabling operators to run either long-term evolution (LTE), WiMAX or both concurrently.
“The Airspan network shows excellent results in terms of coverage and enables us to serve our clients in areas where we were previously unable to reach them on our terrestrial network”, said Philip Gerber, RCS-Communication’s country manager for South Sudan.
The first phase of the network implementation has reportedly started in the South Sudanese capital, Juba,
According to RCS-Communication’s managing director for South Sudan, Flippie Odenda, the company made the investment to upgrade its current WiMAX network to the latest generation technology in preparation for further network improvements and specific service offerings planned.
“Airspan was selected as our vendor because we believe their solution offers us the best scalability and widest choice of future options,” Odendal said in the statement.
Meanwhile, in addition to the macro base stations and other related products and services, Airspan is reportedly supplying RCS with a “comprehensive network management system” called Netspan,” which will also manage any LTE network when deployed if and when activated.
Earlier this year, an official said South Sudan plans to lay a fibre-optic network that will link Juba with submarine cables in East Africa, in order to cut the high cost of using the Internet.
“We are targeting this year, within this year, that we will be connected to the submarine cable,” Juma Stephen, the under-secretary in the country’s telecommunications and postal service ministry told Reuters.
“Construction of fibre-optic cables will more than halve internet prices and make it twice as fast”, he said, adding that government wants to cut that cost by reducing reliance on satellite bandwidth.
Almost two years since the country gained independence, internet access remains a patchy in the young nation, despite several entities, mainly mobile telecommunications companies, providing such services.