Telcos across Africa are focusing on effectively maximising the return on investment from data and monetising emerging opportunities such as the Internet of Things (IoT) to remain competitive and afloat.
This is due to increasing levels of competition and is forcing them to seek new methods to stem the steady decline of traditional voice services. According to George Kalebaila, Research Director for telecommunications, media & Internet of Things at International Data Corporation, they expect greater market consolidation as telcos increase efforts to acquire smaller ISPs in response to the challenging marketing conditions.
“Market consolidation, especially in West Africa will be driven by heightened market saturation, declining average revenues per user (ARPUs), increasing operating expenditure and diminishing profit margins on services. IDC expects some consolidation, especially between local ISPs that possess 4G LTE frequencies and fibre-to-the-x or FTTX infrastructure and multinational telcos with solid financial support,” he says.
In markets where 4G adoption is already gaining traction, discussions around fifth-generation network technology (5G) will take centre stage, creating awareness and bringing the possibilities and expectations of future data networks to the forefront. “IDC expects vendors to focus on the higher bandwidth 5G offers and its potential ability to support emerging services such as IoT, seamless video on demand or IPTV, drone video recording, smart city solutions and virtual reality applications,” says Kalebaila. “We also expect 5G to deliver gigabit connections that enable seamless delivery of rich multimedia services and applications.”
Source - IT News Africa