Describing Africa still as the mobile industry’s fastest growing region, the GSM Association in the report just released in Cape Town, South Africa, forecasts that the region will have 360 million ‘unique mobile subscribers’ – or UMS – by the end of this 2015.
“There will be 386 million unique mobile subscribers in Sub-Saharan Africa by the end of 2015, equivalent to 41 per cent of the region’s population,” the GSMA reported stated.
Revealing the mobile trend of the continent, the Association said “growth in the first half of the decade (2010 to 2015) has been 13 per cent per year (CAGR), more than twice the global average (6 per cent). It (sub-Saharan Africa) overtook Latin America in 2014 to become the world’s third largest mobile subscriber market, behind Asia Pacific and Europe.
“The number of unique mobile subscribers is expected to reach 518 million by 2020, representing almost half of the region’s population by this point.
“Total mobile connections (including multi-SIM, but excluding cellular machine-to-machine) are on track to reach 722 million by year-end. Mobile broadband (3G/4G) will account for almost a quarter of connections this year, but will increase to 57 per cent by 2020, driven by expanding mobile broadband network coverage and falling device costs.”
According to the GSMA report, commercial 3G networks have been launched in 41 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa as of June 2015, while 4G networks are available in 23 countries.
However, 4G networks are still struggling to catch up on subscriber numbers even as 5G is being expected to be ushered in on networks in the advanced economies.