Ericsson, a global provider of telecoms infrastructure and services wants greater collaboration between the continent’s telecoms industry regulators and infrastructure providers to enhance provision of more cost-efficient services to the end-users.
Erik Ekudden, Ericsson’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), speaking in Nairobi during the firm’s Networked Society roundtable said,
“There is a strong interest from regulators in Africa to use opportunities provided to work together with infrastructure providers as well as device vendors. Mobile network operators are greatly supported when regulators harmonise rules and policies on various key industry issues.”
Mr Ekudden also noted the need to relocate low frequency spectrum to mobile network operators for use in providing mobile broadband services.
According to Ericsson’s Mobility Report released in June 2013, the number of mobile subscriptions worldwide has grown approximately 8 percent year-on-year during Q1 2013 with the mobile broadband subscriptions growing by 45 per cent year-on-year to reach around 1.7 billion. The total amount of mobile data traffic doubled between the first quarter of 2012 and first quarter of 2013.
Mr Ekudden emphasized that it is still important to focus on harmonized solutions, noting that “Africa’s IT sector is too fragmented”.
“We’re too fragmented and there is no harmonization of policies which has led to high costs of deployment for service providers. This consequently translates to high costs for consumers,” he said.
The meeting – which was attended by various industry stakeholders including representatives from mobile operators as well as the industry regulator Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) – discussed issues relating to IT industry transformation, role of MNOs in the transforming world, revenue growth, enabling cost efficient operations as well as high performing networks.