Rollout of long-term evolution (LTE) - the latest cellphone technology - has covered 10% of the world's population and is expected to reach 60% by 2018, becoming the fastest developing system in the history of mobile communication.
LTE is now, according to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, on all continents - apart from Antarctica - having being launched by 156 operators in 67 countries. In SA, Vodacom and MTN have launched the offering, with other operators expected to follow suit soon.
Ericsson's report notes that, although early days, LTE networks can already provide downlink peak rates of around 100Mbps, with current standardisation allowing for even higher speeds, although peak speeds are often limited by device capabilities.
Douglas Gilstrap, senior VP and head of strategy at Ericsson, says the company expects LTE subscriptions to exceed a billion in 2017, driven by more capable devices and demand for data-intensive services such as video.
Surging growth
The report notes the number of mobile subscriptions worldwide grew about 8% in the first quarter, compared to the first quarter of last year. Global mobile penetration has reached 90%, with 4.5 billion people having at least one mobile connection out of a global population of seven billion.
There were 6.4 billion mobile subscriptions in the first quarter of the year, excluding machine-to-machine SIMs, after 130 million new cards were added to networks globally. In Africa, there were 27 million new subscriptions, taking the total number of mobile users to 775 million. In Africa, penetration is 71%, ahead of India at 56%.
By 2018, there will be 9.1 billion mobile subscriptions, of which seven billion will be smartphones. Basic phones will account for four billion subscriptions, down from the current five billion, says Ericsson. LTE subscriptions are expected to reach two billion in 2018.
Year-on-year, the number of mobile broadband subscriptions grew at 45%, reaching about 1.7 billion, and about half of all phones sold in the first quarter were smartphones, says Ericsson. Locally, Vodacom expects data to reach between 25% and 30% of revenue in the next three years.
The total amount of mobile data traffic doubled between the first quarter of last year and this year, says the report. In the same period, voice traffic growth was 4% and mobile data traffic will grow 12 times between 2012 and 2018, overtaking volumes of voice traffic, which will be small compared with data by 2018.
Local view
Vodacom CFO Ivan Dittrich has said data provides a "superior" growth opportunity than the one presented by voice.
The operator now has 6 167 3G base stations, as well as 9 348 2G sites and just more than 600 sites on LTE in SA, after it became the first operator to launch the next-generation service in October last year, while 66% of its South African sites are LTE-ready.
Second in line, MTN launched LTE commercially at the end of November and has LTE coverage in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban. It has "modernised" 3 400 base stations in preparation for LTE and will look to add more base stations, as well as extend the service to Cape Town, this year.
Third and fourth mobile operators, Cell C and 8ta, are both testing their LTE services with a group of participants who fall within their coverage areas. 8ta launched its trial in November, in Gauteng, and Cell C launched its trial across SA in December, in the main cities of Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town.
Neotel's LTE trials, which have been running since October last year, have come to an end and the company plans to launch commercial LTE services within the next three months - after garnering customer feedback.
The next-generation technology will initially cover only Gauteng, via 50 LTE-enabled base stations, using the 1 800MHz band.
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