MTN has announced its first commercial installation today of Supersonic AirFibre. The first commercial rollout will commence in Soweto, Mamelodi, Fairlands and Honeydew.
AirFibre uses out of the box thinking to find innovative solutions that can help connect the unconnected.
It harnesses existing open spectrum frequencies, which can lower the cost to serve customers. This is built as a premium uncapped technology that ranges from 5Mbps to 100Mbps, which allows users access to the internet as a full-fibre experience.
MTN used the period since the launch of AirFibre for customers to register their demand.
Since the announcement of the launch of the solution in February this year, MTN has received over 20 000 expressions of interest, with the aim to connect 60 000 homes within the first year. This coincides with a surge in demand for affordable, fibre-like internet access in previously unreachable areas.
Calvin Collett, Managing Director of MTN SA’s ISP: Supersonic, says the beauty of AirFibre is that it serves as an alternative to the labour-intensive rollout of cabled fibre, by using MTN’s existing reception network.
“While the rollout of fibre has been fast in big metropolitan areas, it has been much slower in peri-urban and rural areas. With AirFibre, we have found a cost-effective solution to help close the digital divide,” he says.
“We were delighted by the interest and are ready to deploy AirFibre into areas that need it the most.”
