Many African telecoms have already announced the roll out of faster internet in the form of 4G LTE. Yet as these announcements become the norm, the uptake of such services is still not as expected.

In Kenya, Safaricom, Kenya’s biggest telecom company, became a near casualty when trying to quicken the uptake of its LTE service. In fact, the launch of TheBigBox – a set top box that would enable home users to enjoy 4G speeds – did not work as planned and a new re-launch is in the offing.  

According to the CEO of Safaricom Bob Collymore, the product had issues with any transmission beyond the room where it was set up. However, the company still plans to launch LTE offerings in 16 counties throughout Kenya by end of this year.
Tigo Rwanda and Tigo Tanzania have also launched LTE offerings in their respective countries. MTN has done its fair share to cover most of South Africa. While Vodacom has the most comprehensive LTE coverage in Africa, totalling over 4,600 sites and snapping up two million LTE subscribers.

But its uptake could still be in the initial stages. According to Tumi Chamayou, Vice President, Head of Strategy, Marketing and Communications in Sub Saharan Africa for Ericsson, the uptake of LTE in Africa could only be at 1% of mobile subscription constituting seven million subscribers.
“Currently of the [over 600 million] mobile subscribers 70% are still on GSM and 2G type of technologies,” Chamayou told IDG Connect. Most of the rest have data-less phones. Ericsson projects, however, that in the coming years, the landscape will change in favour of LTE.

“We do see that by 2021 the majority of the technologies will be a combination of WCDMA [3G] and LTE. In combination they will make about 80% penetration,” she added.
“Currently there are 30 commercially available LTE operations in Africa. This is a great growth because operators can now leap from 2G to LTE,” she said.

The challenges

Infrastructure will always be a challenge, however, warned Tony Dolton CEO of Unitel in Angola, at last year’s AfricaCom conference in South Africa.

“There is always an issue in getting spectrum,” Tony said while laying the responsibility on the regulators.
Unenthusiastic spectrum allocation has hit several countries in Africa slowing down its uptake. In an article on CNBCAfrica, Thibaud Rerolle, technology director for Safaricom pointed to this failure.

“When we talk about wireless technology I would say the spectrum is just the amount of oxygen you have in order to feed your customer. So this is absolutely key and what we’re discussing with regulators across the board is to try to find a best way to quickly allocate the spectrum, which is necessary for this type of technology,” he echoed.

“Secondly it’s [having] cost effective and reliable transmissions and how we get to those rural areas,” Dolton from Unitel added.
Dolton explained that LTE will still dominate in urban Africa but the real opportunity lies in the rural areas. Right now most LTE is appealing to corporate clients and middle class citizens. But for it to grow, it needs to be as far spread as 2G is currently.
Yet another challenge Unitel has faced in its LTE deployment is the problem of not having well trained technicians.

“In terms of technology, the complexity is huge. You have a new technology in the market but it doesn’t have loads of technicians, so we have to train our own people. We have now experts in Angola for 2G, 3G and 4G,” Dolton said.

The cost of 4G phones in the market has also become a hindrance for greater adoption. Currently there are few smartphone options for customers under US$100.

Most African mobile phone users stick to their old phones. They can’t switch gadgets as easily as their counterparts in the US, where the cost of the phone is covered within a payment plan.
Miguel Geraldes CEO of MTC Namibia added: “What we can see in the last 12 months is that the prices of 3G devices have a good value in terms of price, pushing 3G coverage in rural areas because it’s affordable.” This could dictate telecoms’ short term priorities.

Achievable solutions

Telecom companies are now pushing the uptake of 4G enabled devices in the market. Safaricom, for example, has launched relatively cheap smartphones in the Kenyan market [the cheapest phone listed is just under US$90] and hopes to exploit the uptake of mobile data to increase its revenue.

During its half year results in October last year, the company said: “Mobile data is our fastest growing revenue stream and we will focus on increasing the number of 3G and 4G smartphones on our network.”

Chamayou advocated for the lowering of handset prices which have 4G capability. Currently, the choice in LTE phones in Africa is slim and expensive, even though new brands are trying to tap into this market.

The trouble is that digital television migration has slumped in Africa which means that a huge amount spectrum is still being used to support analogue broadcasting. When digital broadcasting is fully implemented telecoms should have more spectrum to launch LTE services for their subscribers.

“We need to ensure that the spectrum becomes available, because the technology is already there,” Chamayou reiterated. “Those discussions between the regulators and operators need to happen faster, for us to be able to deploy technologies that are leaner and take less resources on the network and improve the user experience.”

Faster internet speeds in Africa could usher new channels in various industries. The adoption of e-learning could be achieved across the continent. Businesses could have wider choices in products such as teleconferencing. And governments could confidently deploy their services online for citizens. It is not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’.

http://www.idgconnect.com/abstract/12743/forget-5g-africa-hasn-managed-4g

Am in Nairobi Kenya and am using 4G

When are we going to get there?