South African mobile operator, MTN, says that it plans to double the number of its Long Term Evolution (LTE) sites by next year.

MTN's chief technology officer, Kanagaratnam Lambotharan, says he is confident that the telco will meet its target despite a number of challenges impacting on the deployment of LTE.

Speaking at AfricaCom event in Cape Town he said, “We currently have 1,200 sites around the country and aim to increase the sites to 2,400 by 2013.“That will be huge considering we did not even have 100 last year.”

Lambotharan says MTN is in no hurry to launch its LTE service and will not be influenced by the fact that some rivals had already launched the service.

Vodacom, the country’s biggest mobile network operator launched its LTE service recently.

“In my opinion, LTE deployment is not a sprint but a marathon,” he said.

“It is not about being first or second to deploy LTE but all about delivering value. The change in mobile services has always been evolutionary. LTE will be the same.

"The transition from 3G to LTE will happen over a period of several years as is the case with the transition from 2G to 3G. It will not happen overnight,” Lambotharan said.

The telco plans to launch LTE in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban and later Cape Town.