South Africa’s Cell C launched its HSPA+ 900 MHz network in Port Elizabeth as part of its country-wide network rollout. For the moment, the city will be the only area in Africa with such network, offering peak rate download speeds of up to 21.6 Mbps.

Last month, the mobile operator unveiled plans to launch the network on a city-by-city basis until nationwide coverage was achieved. The company’s CEO, Lars P. Reichelt, said that 1600 HSPA+ sites have been deployed and that large scale user tests are running in 10 major cities.

The first phase of the network rollout is expected to be completed by the end of this year, covering about 34% of the South African population. Two additional cities will be blessed with HSPA+ this month, and the end goal is to have 67% of the popular covered by mid 2011.

Mr Reichelt went on talking about the new network’s tech characteristics: “What is significant about Cell C’s network, is that the HSPA+ release 7 network is IP across all network elements. This is a first for Africa, and will be rolled out countrywide and not only in pockets. The same Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology will be used across our entire network. It will be HSPA+ all the way from day one. The combination of R7 all IP networking along with the SDR technology will offer our customers a low latency, high capacity network that can evolve quickly as new standards are released.”

[Via: CellularNews]