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African mobile subscription to hit 930m in 2019 – Ericsson

By BusinessNews Staff on November 17, 2013

Indications have emerged that mobile subscription in the Sub-Sahara Africa will hit an all-time high of 930 million by 2019, says Ericsson.

Out of this number,732 million will come from mobile broadband subscription, mostly in 3G, with about 100 million in LTE services.

The Head of the Sub-Saharan Africa region at Ericsson, Fredrik Jejdling announced this on Wednesday at the on-going African conference holding in Cape Town, South Africa.

During the period under review, he said that there will be 476 million smartphones and mobile data traffic will grow 17 times by the date stated above.

According to him, mobile banking and social networking will drive demand under the period in review.

He stated that Ericsson had studied about 180 operators across the globe and had identified service enablers, network developers, and service creators as major strategic approaches for data growth.

He said that service providers can team up with the enablers to achieve better results. Service creators, he said should develop their own applications to ease service delivery.

He observed that several operators are going to scramble for subscribers over the next few years as the market gets more competitive.

For operators to benefit from the imminent explosion from data demand, Jejdlig said, regulators must provide the enabling environment for this to happen. He noted that Africa’s biggest challenge in data coverage lies in the door coverage. To boost indoor coverage, he however, announced that Ericsson recently introduced a new device that can aid service operators provide uninterrupted indoor services in buildings, when attached to in-building CAT 5 cabling, as an online solution.

[Vanguard]

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