As promised at the launch in February, South African ISP Supersonic is now extending the coverage of its Unlimited Air Fibre wireless broadband product.
South African tech news service MyBroadband says that the company will roll out its Unlimited Air Fibre service in most of South Africa’s major cities – including Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Soweto and Durban – from May this year.
The wireless broadband product was first announced in February 2021 when, as we reported, MTN secured exclusivity for the product in Africa – although rollout plans have to date focused only on South Africa. Supersonic uses MTN to provide LTE wireless internet to homes and Supersonic can only allow devices that have been network approved by MTN.
However, the Supersonic website explains that, although MTN and Supersonic packages make use of the same network, they are separate provider offers, and no migration between these will be allowed.
The Supersonic solution uses what it calls cutting-edge telecommunications equipment with advanced noise-cancelling technology which can provide connectivity using unlicensed spectrum, thus avoiding the congestion that can affect South Africa’s mobile networks.
It includes radios which will be installed on MTN’s mobile towers to communicate with small antennas located at subscribers’ homes. This has allowed Supersonic to offer the service with uncapped data at what are described as attractive prices.
The newly announced rollout plans were apparently based on feedback that showed great interest for the product in the suburbs of major cities with no fibre coverage.
Tarana Wireless (which describes itself as the world’s lowest-cost gigabit broadband system) supplies the radios, which are capable of up to 700Mbps download speeds. However MyBroadband says that Supersonic is throttling speeds to ensure reliable performance for all users.
Each tower equipped with these radios will be able to service 2,000 customers. Supersonic aims to cover over 600,000 homes with its wireless broadband offering within its first year.