Companies are taking the lead in introducing new technologies, but regulators are lagging far behind the pace of technological change

The race is on among African operators to roll out the continent's first commercial 4G network using Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology. LTE, which allows very high download speeds for mobile internet, is still quite new. Operators launched the world's first service in Sweden in 2009. 


Some African operators have made fantastic claims in the bid to be first. In January, Globacom rushed to announce it had launched a 4G LTE network, but Nigerian regulators are still undecided about how they will issue licences for the spectrum and there are no LTE devices for sale or in use. South Africa looks nearly set for launch. Following LTE trials in 2010 by Vodacom, in July competitor MTN launched tests at 100 sites in Johannesburg using equipment from Ericsson.


"We've got a downlink speed of around 60 Mbps and latency [a measure of system delay] between 30 and 40 milliseconds," says Craig Hosken, a vice president at Ericsson sub-Saharan Africa. "It's substantially faster and wireless as well." In comparison, current landline broadband speeds in South Africa average around 2-3 Mbps.


What LTE provides is almost like the icing on the cake

MTN's pilot is being done using 'refarmed' 1,800MHz spectrum, but ideally LTE needs spectrum in the 2.6GHz frequency, which has not yet been allocated by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa. It will also be possible to launch LTE on the lower 800MHz frequency once this is freed up by broadcasters moving from analogue to digital – not expected to finish in South Africa until the end of 2013. Ericsson is also doing trials in Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Ghana and is in discussions with operators in two other African countries. 


LTE will be most pertinent in high-density urban areas where users want high-speed connections. Existing base stations that provide 2G and 3G coverage can be adapted to LTE standards, reducing the cost of roll-out. In Kenya, the government has put out a tender for companies to run a 'universal access' national LTE network. Bidders have to be 20 percent owned by a Kenyan company (ruling out Indian-owned Bharti Airtel), and Safaricom and Telkom Kenya are likely to be part of the winning consortium. 


As operators wait for regulators to begin the long process of allocating the spectrum, they cannot afford to stall on 3G rollout. "There are huge opportunities for 3G in Africa, we've only seen the tip of the iceberg," says Ericsson's Hosken. "What LTE provides is almost like the icing on the cake, so what you get are things like higher speed, lower latency and possible last-mile deployment, which you get faster with LTE than 3G."


That African operators are keeping pace with their global peers in testing LTE shows that they now consider themselves able to roll out the latest technology as and when it is ready. The question is how quickly the regulators will work to make it a reality.