Ovum: African mobile broadband connections to double by 2022

The number of mobile broadband connections in Africa will more than double in the next five years, according to research by Ovum.

The new stats claim that the number of African broadband connections will climb from 419 million at the end of 2017 to 1.07 billion at the end of 2022.

This will be driven by further roll-out of 3G W-CDMA and 4G LTE networks and the increasing affordability of smartphones.

Ovum forecasts that in 2019, W-CDMA will become Africa’s biggest mobile technology by subscriptions, and there will be 858 million W-CDMA connections on the continent by end-2022.

It predicts there will be 210 million LTE subscriptions in Africa at end-2022 and that the first 5G services will launch on the continent in 2021, but that initial take-up will be “modest” with just 1 million 5G subscriptions expected by the end of 2022.

“Data connectivity is growing strongly in Africa, and there are also good prospects on the continent in areas such as digital media, mobile financial services, and the Internet of Things,” said Matthew Reed, practice leader Middle East and Africa at Ovum.

“But as Africa’s TMT market becomes more convergent and complex, service providers are under increasing pressure to make the transition from being providers of communications services to providers of digital services.”

The Ovum team will be attending AfricaCom in Cape Town this week, with the event running from November 7 – 9