South African mobile network operator Cell C announced that it has successfully completed its network migration ahead of schedule. The migration involves Cell C deactivating its own physical tower and radio access network, and seamlessly migrating its prepaid and mobile virtual network operator customers to a virtualized RAN enabled by MTN, its network infrastructure partner.
However, Cell C will not operate as an MVNO. Rather, it continues to use its own spectrum and still controls the customer experience. Cell C’s postpaid contract subscribers already roam on the Vodacom network, under a deal made between the companies in 2021.
“This is a huge milestone for Cell C and our valued customers,” explains Schalk Visser, Cell C’s CTO. “We have effectively increased our network access close to three-fold in less than three years, from 5,500 towers to 14,000. We are the first mobile operator to think about our network strategy differently and instead of trying to build out an expensive and unsustainable network we chose to become a buyer of network services.” More than 12,000 of those sites are 4G LTE-enabled, the company indicated.
Cell C has close to 14 million subscribers and is the fourth largest MNO in South Africa behind MTN, Vodacom and Telkom SA, according to Inside Towers Intelligence. Cell C says its customers will benefit from the expanded national coverage, better quality connections, fewer dropped calls and generally a more stable network during load shedding with MTN investing in back-up power.
Cell C claims this innovation has changed the telecommunications landscape, with the market now made up of MNOs that own infrastructure and those that buy Infrastructure-as-a-Service. Inside Towers raised the prospect of MNOs relinquishing their network infrastructure to focus on the services side of their business in a 2020 article titled, “Do Wireless Carriers Need to Own Their Own Networks?”
“This ground-breaking model has propelled Cell C’s network footprint forward by 20 years,” says Visser. “We now have access to best-in-class infrastructure, can benefit from scale and have simultaneously reduced our network expenses and capital expenditure on costly infrastructure.”
Without the network migration, Cell C would have to invest millions each year to deploy RAN infrastructure in the traditional MNO model. Vodacom and MTN each spend roughly $535 million a year on their mobile networks in South Africa. In its latest financial results, Telkom SA reported capital expenditure of approximately $150 million on its mobile network in the past year.
“We can now focus our investment and energies into innovating products and services that will add value to customers, knowing that we can operate from a competitive platform that offers the same quality connectivity to all South Africans,” Visser emphasizes.
By John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor
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