The mobile market needs to reconcile consumer expectations of lower prices with government and regulators expectations of higher fees and investor expectations of higher returns, says Andrew Mthembu, deputy CEO of the Vodacom Group.
He was speaking in his capacity as GSM Africa chairman, at the GSM Africa CEO Forum, held at the Michelangelo Hotel in Sandton.
Only three out of 54 African countries do not have GSM coverage.
Andrew Mthembu, chairman, GSM Africa
GSM is understood to mean Global System (for) Mobile (Communications) although its original meaning was Groupe Sp'ecial Mobile, since it was originally developed in France.
Introducing the keynote speaker, Mthembu said that GSM has the potential to greatly improve Africa`s lot in terms of its economic impact, particularly as only three out of 54 African countries do not have GSM coverage.
"At present, there is only around 6% GSM penetration on the continent, but we are hoping that it could well be double this shortly," says Mthembu.
"We have both a moral imperative - as GSM can be a strong tool for economic growth and poverty alleviation - and a business imperative, in terms of the fact that only around 5% of Africa`s 850 million people use mobile at this point, to continue to drive the use of GSM."
Keynote speaker Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association, continues this theme, saying that the aim of the association is to provide a more authoritative voice for the industry and offer a better understanding of operators` markets.
"GSM continues to dominate the global wireless market, and some 99.4% of the world`s population lives in territories that have adopted the GSM standard," says Conway.
"The beauty of GSM is that it is an open architecture, so no one owns it, meaning that it allows those who have adopted it to be a global player in what is a global market."
He says that although there are rival standards, such as CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), more than 70% of mobile subscribers in 2002 used the GSM standard."
"For example, China has the two largest mobile operators in the world, which between them have a total of 224.9 million GSM subscribers. This is more than the worldwide total of CDMA users."
"Our priorities for this year have been to focus on the development of third-generation GSM (3GSM) standards and also to focus on the evolution and enhancement of SIM card security," he says.
He believes that the organisation is beginning to assume greater responsibilities in terms of issues such as mobile phone related crime and hazards such as spam.
"We have implemented a Central Equipment Identity Register (CEIR), which is designed to make mobile devices less attractive to thieves, as the CEIR can track these devices, while we are also co-ordinating an international approach to counter mobile spam."
"Although GSM has been dismissed before as an "outdated European technology", it is undoubtedly the way forward for the mobile arena. More than 75% of our operator members now come from outside Europe, which just illustrates how global this technology has become."
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