Vodacom has responded to the growing demand created by social media by deploying another first in South Africa, a feature known as the Dual-Carrier High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (DC-HSUPA).
According to Andries Delport, chief technology officer of Vodacom, the new feature will provide Vodacom customers with the fastest upload speeds to enhance the experience while using popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
Mobile network providers spend a lot of resources improving download speeds on the 3G and 4G networks and this has resulted in better download speeds whilst upload speeds have not improved at the same rate.
Delport commented, “We’re noticing an upsurge in the usage of social media networks on our networks and it was crucial for us to improve uplink data speeds and thus afford our customers fast speeds and quality of sharing when uploading pictures and video clips on social media.”
He continue, “By deploying the DC-HSUPA, we are reacting to the demand created by social media and simultaneously improving user experience across social media platforms. As a result, our customers will be able to upload a 1-minute video clip in 30 seconds and big size images in milliseconds on Facebook and Instagram.”
He explained that DC-HSUPA overcomes the one-carrier limitation and enables uplink data to be transmitted over two 5 MHz carriers, allowing for a higher uplink data rate. The feature offers an uplink peak rate twice as much as a single-carrier uplink peak rate on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) networks, so the uplink peak data can be increased from 5.76 Mbit/s to 11.5 Mbit/s on UMTS networks with this technology.
Delport said the new feature speaks to the investment the company has made on its network over the years. Vodacom will spend R8 billion on the network this year to bring the three-year investment total to R26 billion.
“We’re doing what other networks haven’t done in South Africa in order to provide our customers with improved speeds on social media platforms. As a network that strives to put customers at the centre of everything we do, this way we are not only improving the user experience when uploading material on social media, but we are also responding to change in user behaviour on our network,” concluded Delport.
