Falling returns on voice segment of the mobile phone industry has forced providers to shift to data as the next revenue stream. Photo/FREDRICK ONYANGO
By JEVANS NYABIAGE jnyabiage@ke.nationmedia.comPosted Monday, February 21 2011 at 16:42
The battleground on which mobile phone operators competed over the last two decades has been well defined - coverage.
To provide better quality voice and acquire a larger market share, operators needed to guarantee better reach.
But things are slowly changing as mobile data becomes the arena on which today’s operator are battling.
To be able to withstand the growing mobile data traffic, providers are going for superior technologies.
“Data traffic is rapidly growing and this is slowly driving the uptake of advanced technologies,” said Mr Andre Mechaly, marketing and customer solutions director at Alcatel-Lucent, in an interview last week.
He said although Africa still trails in the deployment of third generation networks to drive internet use, there is a clear trend of increasing data traffic.
In Kenya, in the next two months, the mobile internet landscape is expected to get a jolt when Airtel Kenya and Telkom Kenya launch their third generation (3G) networks.
Market leader, Safaricom is the only firm presently providing commercial third generation network services.
The latest fad in the technology space, however, is a more advanced technology known as Long Term Evolution (LTE).
LTE is the standard that carriers and manufacturers are beginning to accept as the evolution of 3G, which will enable operators to deal with the rapidly growing data traffic.
“Africa doesn’t have a good fixed-line access, and the widely used mode of access to the internet is through wires. As frequencies become scarce, advanced technologies such as LTE will be the solution,” said Mr Mechaly.
But in African countries, Mr Francis Hook, IDC East Africa regional manager, said the deployment of such technologies faces obstacles, mainly related to cost.
Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria are leading in the deployment although analysts are forecasting that the process will take long to happen as operators recoup their investments in 3G while waiting for the cost of 4G handsets to fall.
This is true because many operators in sub-Saharan Africa have not yet deployed 3G services, let alone next-generation technology like LTE, mainly due to the high cost of spectrum, costs of deployment and competition from early adopters in the market.
Mr Hook says lack of spectrum is also a major issue, and plays into operators’ choice of various technologies.
The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), recently provided an update report on the progress of LTE network deployments around the world -”Evolution to LTE”, saying 180 operators in 70 countries are currently investing in the technology.
The report said 128 operators have committed to deploy commercial LTE systems in 52 countries, and there are a further 52 trials or pilots in an additional 18 countries.
A total of 17 operators have commercially launched LTE networks, in Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Norway, Poland, Sweden, USA, and Uzbekistan.
Safaricom in Kenya, Globacom in Nigeria and Vodacom and MTN in South Africa are testing LTE mainly for data backhaul and only Safaricom is providing voice access for those with enabled handsets, who for now are few.
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