Tech Times TT 4
Daily Times Nigeria Tuesday, September 15, 2015
LTE surpasses other mobile subscription globally with 755m – Report
. L-R: Dr. Bayero Agabi, publicity secretary; Temitope Fashedemi, vice president; Ms. Oyeronke M. Oyetunde, President; Dapo Adejokun, Treasurer; Fidelis Orji, Executive Secretary and Professor Caleb Adeniyi Osuntogun, NIG BOT member, during the Group’s annual general meeting held in Lagos recently.
Nigeria internet group elects Oyeronke Oyetunde as new president Stories by Tony Nwakaegho The Nigeria Internet Group (NIG) has unanimously elected Ms. Oyeronke M. Oyetunde as President following the sole nomination at the 2015 Annual General Meeting (AGM) of NIG, held in Lagos. Ms Oyetunde, who doubles as the General Manager, Regulatory Affairs at MTN Nigeria will steer NIG till 2017 when another round of election is expected.
Ms Oyetunde has been with MTN Nigeria since 2004 traversing Senior Manager Regulatory Affairs, Regulatory Affairs Manager after an instinct with Aluko and Oyebode, a law firm. As a seasoned, highly experienced telecommunications regulation manager, she is also skilled and dynamic in corporate counsel. During the elections, Mr. Temitope Fashedemi was returned as the vice president for the sec-
ond term and Dr. Bayero Agabi as Publicity Secretary, as well as Mr. Dapo Adejokun who was returned as Treasurer. NIG was formed in 1995 as a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) to advocate for policies to guide the internet governance in Nigeria. Also in attendance was a member of the NIG board of trustees, Professor Caleb Adeniyi Osuntogun, and executive secretary among others.
NITDA supports DEMO Africa to develop, technology startup, entrepreneurs in Nigeria The Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mr. Peter Jack has explained that the agency is supporting this year’s DEMO Africa forum in accordance to its mandate of developing entrepreneurs in the country. The NITDA DG said the agency believes that DEMO Africa, the annual event starting from September 21-25 in Lagos is a launch-pad for technology start-up companies, adding that the event is capable of retooling technology leaders and entrepreneurs in Nigeria. “Africa is growing in strength and its youths are pointing to the direction of things to come. NITDA is committed to Demo Africa as part of its mandate to youth development from the perspective of IT as well as its belief that a large population of highly exposed and trained youths will be the driver of Ni-
geria’s new economy,” he said. He added that it is actions by different players that will see technology entrepreneurship effectively bringing sustainability to entrepreneurship across Africa. DEMO Africa is one of the flagship initiatives of LIONS@ frica and aims to connect African startups to the global ecosystem. DEMO Africa is the place where the most innovative companies from African countries get a platform to launch their products and announce to Africa and the world what they have developed. Out of the thirty start-ups that will showcase their products and services this year, Nigeria leads the table with eight startups including PoshRite, Oga Venue, TalkingBookz, iKon Tracker, Mavis Computel, CarpartsNigeria, Zuvaa, and SmartEdu. Similarly, Kenya, which is in-
creasingly gaining global spot as tech-startup haven, has six namely: Bitsoko, BambaPOS, Shield Finance, InsureAfrika, LipaPlus, ENT-Mobile, Abacus, and SimbaPay. South Africa has three startup-representatives: Edge Books, Bozza and Eco-mc2, while Ghana has two including Ghana’s Zeepay and Flippy Campus. Egypt also has two: LockName and Raye7. Cameroon features two: Koomza and Feem Wi-Fi; and Zimbabwe also has two startups: IPC eProductivity and RoadRules. Uganda, Tanzania and Ivory Coast each have one startup in this order respectively: Roundbob, Tango TV, and Airshop. Francophone Ivory Coast with its Airshop startup company will be featuring in the event for the first time and underscores the expanding ecosystem for Africa’s technology startups.
The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) has confirmed in a report that LTE subscription globally is growing faster than any other mobile technology. Citing the mobile data subscription submitted to the association by Ovum, UK based research firm, GSA said LTE subscription net additions continue to outpace all other mobile communications technologies with 755 million LTE subscriptions worldwide on 30 June 2015. The Vice President of Research, GSA, Alan Hadden, said: “441 million LTE subscriptions were added in the past year, equivalent to 140% annual growth. For the first time LTE exceeded ten per cent share (10.44%) of the worldwide subs total for all mobile technologies. GSA forecasts over 1 billion LTE subscriptions worldwide by the end of 2015”. The report stated that LTE subscriptions increased by 113.5 million in Q2 2015, which is over 52% higher than for 3G/WCDMA-HSPA which gained 74.4 million. GSM subscriptions fell by over 98 million in the quarter. APAC increased its share of global LTE subscriptions to 51.2%. North America has almost 200 million LTE subscriptions (198 million) and remains the second largest LTE market, though its share reduced to 26.2% of the global total compared with 42.4% a year earlier. European share remained at around 16% and the total number of LTE subscriptions across Western Europe markets has just passed 100 million. Strong growth was seen in
Hadden
the Latin America and Caribbean region which now has over 22.5 million 4G/LTE subscriptions and over 17.2 million higher than a year ago, equivalent to 324% annual growth. A strong performance for LTE was also achieved in the Middle East where more than 1 million LTE subscriptions were added monthly. The region has 23.7 million LTE subscriptions and an annual growth of 194%. Russia has almost 3x the number of LTE subscriptions compared to one year earlier. By June 2015 China had passed 225 million LTE subscriptions, 63.5 million in Q2 alone. 422 operators have commercially launched LTE systems in 143 countries, according to GSA data announced in July 2015. GSA forecasts there will be 460 commercially launched LTE networks by end 2015. LTE-Advanced deployments have taken hold in all markets around the world. Now over 30% of operators are investing in LTE-Advanced system deployments, with the commercialisation of carrier aggregation the first feature to be exploited. 88 operators, i.e. over 20% of all LTE operators, have commercially launched LTE-Advanced service in 45 countries. 15 LTE-Advanced networks support Category 4 devices (above 100 Mbps up to 150 Mbps peak downlink speed) while 73 networks support Category 6 devices (above 150 Mbps up to 300 Mbps). The number of LTE and LTE-Advanced subscriptions is expected to pass the 3G/WCDMA-HSPA global total in 2020.