Cell C announced it has completed a national rollout roaming agreement with MTN, following diligent work from the working teams over the last few months.
The terms of the agreement sees MTN providing both 3G and 4G services to Cell C in areas where Cell C has chosen to purchase coverage rather than self-build, mainly outside of the main metro areas, according to a statement.
It also means Cell C customers will now have access to thousands of additional sites, of which around two thirds are LTE enabled.
Jose Dos Santos, Cell C CEO, says: "Feedback from the areas that went live with the service early on has been fantastic, and the positive responses from customers around the country continue to come in.
"Being able to seamlessly handover from our network to MTN's without noticing the switch has been the biggest benefit of this roaming agreement. Previously, this was not possible when customers entered roaming areas."
In the statement, Cell says ensuring an enhanced customer experience has been the primary focus of the roaming agreement with MTN. In addition, roaming access is now automatic without manually applying device settings to allow roaming.
MTN CEO Godfrey Motsa says the deal has highlighted the value that comes from infrastructure sharing.
"Competition in our industry is more robust when we are all competing on both service and infrastructure. By roaming on MTN, Cell C has dramatically boosted its coverage, with a strong focus on rural areas. Bottom line - more South Africans have more choice and that is good for competition which is good for our country.
"We are actively engaging ICASA to release 4G spectrum to enable more growth, more competition and to help further drive down data prices."
Dos Santos adds: "We would like to thank the teams at Cell C, MTN and the network suppliers for their dedication and hard work on this rollout."
Last week, Vodacom and Telkom also announced a long-term, multi-billion-rand agreement whereby Telkom will obtain roaming and facilities leasing services from Vodacom with full effect from June 2019.
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