Vodacom has, ahead of schedule, turned on LTE for some areas in Durban. Vodacom says that they have managed to more than double the number of LTE-enabled base stations since the service launched for South Africa in October this year.

Johannesburg and Pretoria were the first two cities to get LTE, Durban making up the third. Vodacom’s KwaZulu Natal managing executive Albert Breed said in a statement:

“To start off with we have rolled out the technology to a small number of sites – mainly around the Umhlanga area – but we plan to grow this number in the coming months. In fact, the plan is to have over 60 sites up and running across KwaZulu-Natal by the end of the first quarter of next year. What’s more, we have also recently completed a total upgrade of the existing network in the province. This upgrade, together with the launch of LTE, has increased capacity and improved our overall network performance. ”

Cape Town is next in line for LTE access from the mobile service provider and should have their LTE network active before the end of 2012.