Sub-Saharan Africa is undergoing a data revolution with traffic growth doubling the past year.
This is according to the June 2014 Sub-Saharan Africa Ericsson Mobility Report, which shows that in 2014, phone users accessed 76 000TB of data per month, double the 2013 figure of 37 500TB per month.
In 2015, Ericsson says the figures are expected to double again with mobile phone users accessing 147 000TB per month.
Ericsson believes that the rise of social media, content-rich apps and video content accessed from a new range of cheaper smartphones has prompted the escalation. Consumers in Kenya, SA and Nigeria are also increasingly using video TV and media services from their smartphones, it points out.
"Sub-Saharan Africa is currently undergoing a mobile digital revolution with consumers, networks and even media companies wakening up the possibilities of 3G and 4G technology," says Fredrik Jejdling, regional head of Ericsson sub-Saharan Africa.
"We have seen the trend emerging over a few years but in the past 12 months the digital traffic has increased over 100%, forcing us to revise our existing predictions."
In the next five years, the report's findings show that the voice call traffic in sub-Saharan Africa will double and there will be an explosion in mobile data with usage in sub-Saharan Africa growing 20 times between 2013 and 2019, twice the anticipated global expansion, says Ericsson.
By 2019, the report predicts that 75% of mobile subscriptions will be Internet inclusive (3G or 4G), it adds.
This growth has been predicted following the unveiling in 2014 of a number of smartphones for under $50 by a number of major device manufacturers allowing the rapid expansion of 3G and 4G technology across the region. The 2014 report predicts that in just three years' time 3G technology will become the dominant technology across the region.
"The rise of cheap smartphones will allow vast portions of the population - from middle classes in cities to small businesses in rural areas - access to mobile broadband," says Jejdling. "M-commerce can offer endless opportunities for entrepreneurs and we've found that farmers are fans of mobile wallets - as well as teenagers wanting to watch music videos on their smartphone."
Ericsson regularly performs traffic measurements in over 100 live networks across the world and predictions have been made in collaboration with Ericsson ConsumerLab, utilising population and macroeconomic trends combined with the company's own anonymised data.
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