South Africa's Vodacom and Samsung have partnered to be the first in the country to update Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ devices on its network. to enable the latest technology upgrades.
The upgrade will enable Vodacom's subscribers to access the 4x4 MIMO and 256-QAM technology enhancements and at the same time to enjoy the VoLTE and VoWi-Fi service.
The 4x4 MIMO enables the transmission of multiple signals via the same set of air interface resources by leveraging on uncorrelated transmit and receive antennas and uncorrelated paths (multipaths) on the air interface (the channel) and allows for increased throughput and speeds. Using the QAM-256, a waveform/symbol carries as much data as possible in order to achieve higher data rates and increase spectral efficiency.
The addition of 4x4 MIMO and 256-QAM allows extremely high 4G speeds to be achieved where the same features have been enabled on the network, said Vodacom. Vodacom claims that it has demonstrated speeds exceeding 500Mb/s in numerous locations around South Africa.
Vodacom and Samsung claim to have led the deployment of various features with many firsts, including the S6 and S6 Edge VoLTE commercial release on 10 April 2015, a global first.
Andries Delport, CTO, Vodacom Group
We’re delighted to become the first network operator to commercially release these new, advanced features in South Africa. This is another first in a string of firsts we’ve launched together with Samsung in SA and follows weeks of tireless effort from the joint project team. Importantly, this is a testament to the innovation Vodacom and Samsung is bringing to the market to overcome the spectrum shortages that we’re experiencing in our market.
