Parkview, in Johannesburg, on Friday became the first of more than 50 targeted suburbs to go live on telecommunications group Telkom’s new long-term-evolution advanced (LTE-A) network.

The superfast network, which boasted peak Internet connectivity speeds of nearly 150 Mb/s, formed part of Telkom’s plans to transform suburbs into “futurehoods” offering high-speed broadband specific to the needs of the residents and business.

Telkom, which would connect all the identified suburbs to the “plug-and-play” LTE-A network by March 2015, had abandoned its initial plans of rolling out fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) in Parkview.

Earlier this year, Telkom said 20 suburbs had been selected for its FTTH project, including Parkview and Parkhurst.

By the end of September, the project, which aimed to enable guaranteed speeds of 100 Mb/s on the network across the suburbs, had passed nearly 2 000 of the targeted 25 000 homes.

However, Telkom COO Dr Brian Armstrong said that, while these suburbs were identified two years ago for fibre, LTE-A was expected to be a more suitable fit for “the Parks”.

This comes as the Parkview Residents Association (PRA) selected Dark Fibre Africa to build a FTTH network, with construction set to start in January.

The first services were expected to be available from April 2015.

The PRA stated earlier this month that the open-access network was expected to deliver higher quality services at costs lower than that of asymmetric digital subscriber line, or ADSL.

“We expect prices to start below R600 a month. For less than R1 000 a month, you could have a very fast 50 Mb/s line with a phone, cheaper phone calls, 100 GB [data] a month – enough for a lot of movies – and all with 1 GB of mobile data included. This would enable you to drop your phone line altogether, saving R166.50 each month,” the association said in an announcement to residents.

Telkom Mobile and Consumer MD Attila Vitai said LTE-A was comparable to the speeds available over a fibre network and offered a “compelling alternative” to fixed-line solutions for high-speed connectivity.

The company’s LTE-A platform operated within 2.3 GHz spectrum, which allowed for efficient, high-quality and stable technology.

“Our customers will be able to download a 10 GB high-definition movie in less than eight minutes or download a 60 MB music album within nine seconds,” he explained.

Telkom’s promotional offer included 100 GB of data for R1 399 a month over a 36-month contract.

Telkom salespeople had started talking to residents on Thursday, with one customer already signing on.

And there was interest in Parkhurst, said Vitai, despite the suburb also embarking on its own FTTH project.

In October, communications start-up Vumatel connected the first of the Parkhurst homes to its FTTH network, with all the homes expected to be connected by February next year.

Vumatel also planned to roll out its FTTH network across 41 other suburbs in Johannesburg and Cape Town.