MTN and Vodacom battle over 3.6 Mbps HSDPA

Let’s first take a look at what HSDPA is?

High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is a 3G (third generation) mobile telephony communications protocol in the High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) family, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity.

Vodacom vs MTN

On the 24 January, 2008, MTN announced the release of their 3.6 Mbps HSDPA service availability.

MTN has taken the lead in the mobile broadband arena by announcing that its 3.6 Mbps HSDPA service is officially available at selected locations in metropolitan areas.

Users who connect to the MTN HSDPA network in 3.6 Mbps enabled areas will currently automatically receive the higher speeds at no extra charge. They will also not be required to subscribe for an upgrade. Read More..

Just 2 days later (26 January, 2008), Vodacom jumped into the contest with the release of their 3.6 Mbps HSDPA services.

Vodacom announced that all their customers will have the option to experience the new 3.6 Mbps HSDPA service without any additional charges until 30 April 2008 across its 3G HSDPA network.

“As the Mobile Broadband market leader, Vodacom has extended the benefit of South Africa’s widest HSDPA 3.6 coverage, free, to all our customers for a period of three months across all 3G HSDPA coverage areas,” says Dot Field, Chief Communications Officer, Vodacom Group. Read More..

It’s clear that South Africa’s top two cellular networks are battling it out over high speed mobile broadband! I’ve mentioned before that 2008 is the year for mobile technology to boom in South Africa and this is the beginning. With speeds of 3.6 Mpbs, services such as Yeigo, Fring, Truphone and Jajah will become more and more useful!

I watch the mobile industry fairly closely and I think big things are going to happen after these two fantastic announcements by MTN and Vodacom!