South African broadband group Rain (previously Wireless Business Solutions [WBS]) has ended the beta trial of its new mobile LTE-A venture ‘Rain Mobile’ on 4 June, in preparation for a commercial launch, TechCentral writes. The operator was cited as saying: ‘We do not want to give too much away, but let’s just say we’ll be live with our commercial offering before you know it … Unfortunately, this exciting news means the end of the beta programme, so on the evening of 4 June 2018 your Rain Beta SIM/SIMs will be deactivated.’
As previously reported by TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, Rain launched an alpha trial of the fully mobile LTE-A service in metro areas in November 2017, available only to company staff. The mobile trial was eventually extended to a select group of other users, under a plan to launch commercial 4G mobile data-centric packages to compete with established cellular operators, with these services to be offered alongside Rain’s existing fixed LTE-A packages (offered via ISP partners).