South African telecommunications services provider Telkom has deployed a LTE three downlink component carrier (3CC DL) network at Fancourt in George, ahead of the annual Southern Africa Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (SATNAC) in September.

According to the telco the network deployed is a commercially live, carrier aggregated 3G and LTE network and is not intended as a 'demo' network, but will remain in operation after the event.

Attila Vitai, Telkom's Chief Executive Officer for Consumer Retail, said it is the first one deployed by the company in this configuration.

"Using commercially available devices Telkom will demonstrate bandwidths in excess of 260Mbit/s to smartphones which demonstrates the commitment to implement newer standards and technologies once they become commercially available," said Vitai.

Telkom explains that while LTE carrier aggregation has already been deployed on its mobile

network since the launch of LTE-A, its intention is to begin enabling carrier aggregation across frequency bands as part of the evolution towards 4.5G and 5G networks.

"4.5G is a natural evolution of the 3GPP standards and enables operators to protect their investment by using existing infrastructure and spectrum, to offer higher data rates and improved user experience using commercially available devices," Vitai added.