Orange Erects 25 4G Towers In Gaborone
Staff Writer | Monday March 2, 2015 14:37
While the rest of the local mobile operators are yet to rollout their first 4G live sites, Orange has promised Gaborone residents that they aim to erect 40 live sites for the city before long. Their target for Gaborone and Francistown is to have 101 live 4G sites. At an event held for journalists to have intimate feel and experience of the speed of the 4G technology last week, Orange director of corporate affairs, Lepata Mafa also said currently Orange has 25 live 4G sites including at Ext 10, Game City, G/West Industrial, BBS, among others.
Orange also announced that they are further taking the 4G technology to 30 more towns and Villages among them Mogoditshane, Tlokweng, Gabane, Oodi, Mmopane, Metsimotlabe, Thamaga, Jwaneng, Molepolole and Goodhope,
Francistown will this week become the second city in Botswana to go live with 4G, and will soon be followed by Maun and Palapye, according to Mafa.
Orange says since its commercial launch on Saturday 14 February, usage of the Orange 4G network has grown in leaps and bounds. “4G is rapidly changing mobile behaviour, with customers increasing their data usage - watching more television and video, using mobile office applications, real time video, streaming music, and other rich multimedia applications on the go.
“As the only operator to have successfully launched 4G on the market in Botswana, we have unique insight into how the technology is changing behaviour. Mobile devices have effectively become mini TVs with video traffic already making up a considerable proportion of the data traffic on our 4G network.
We saw a slight spike in video traffic during and around the Oscar Awards ceremony early on Monday morning and into the evening,” said Mafa.
Orange also announced that they have invested a lot in revamping the 2G and 3G technologies, and expect the take up of 4G to free up space and reduce congestion for the 2G and 3G services, resulting in much better services throughout the network. Orange has also introduced a smartphone device, the Orange Roya, designed to take advantage of Orange’s 4G networks.
The 4G Android smartphone offers specifications and features traditionally associated with more expensive devices.