The 2014 Ericsson Mobility Report also forecasts that mobile internet usage will increase at twice the global rate in the next five years. According to the report, mobile internet use would double year-on-year, with usage expected to increase 20 times in the next five years.
The June 2014 Sub-Saharan Africa Ericsson Mobility Report showed that in 2014 phone users accessed 76,000 TB (terabyte) of data per month, double the 2013 figure of 37,500 TB per month.
The report indicated that in 2015 the figures could double again with mobile phone users accessing 147,000 TB per month.
The rise of social media, content-rich apps and video content accessed from a new range of cheaper smart phones prompted the rise, the report said.
Consumers in Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria are also increasingly using videoTV and media services from their smart phones.
Analysing the report, Ericsson Country Manager, Kamar Abass, said the key enabler of these projections will the performance of ICT in other sectors of the economy, devices and local content, national broadband policies as well as high network performance.
He stressed the need for operators to improve on infrastructure sharing and also balance WiFi traffic with GSM.
Fredrik Jejdling, Regional Head of Ericsson Sub-Saharan Africa, said: “Sub-Saharan Africa is currently undergoing a mobile digital revolution with consumers, networks and even media companies are wakening up the possibilities of 3G and 4G technology. We have seen the trend emerging over a few years but in the past twelve months the digital traffic has increased over 100% forcing us to revise our existing predictions.”
