Africa and Middle East to lead mobile broadband growth, report says

They might seem like unlikely areas for massive mobile broadband growth, but Africa and the Middle East will lead the world in terms of mobile broadband through 2012, according to research. Although these regions are not currently hotbeds of mobile broadband activity, it is reckoned that having been "starved" of internet access, they will double their share of global mobile data revenue by 2014.

The research has been carried out by Pyramid Research, the telecom research arm of the Light Reading Communications Network and specialists in emerging communications, media and technology markets, and was published under the catchy title: 'Emerging Opportunity: Boom Times Ahead for Mobile Broadband in Africa & Middle East'.<

Previously suffering from inadequate fixed infrastructure and insufficient competition in the market, internet services in both the Middle East and Africa have been "either unavailable, unaffordable, or both," according to the report's author Dearbhla McHenry, analyst at Pyramid Research. However, the advent of mobile broadband is set to change all that; and with the currently untapped demand for internet access, Pyramid is predicting boom times ahead.

McHenry explains; "We expect mobile broadband adoption in Africa and the Middle East to grow faster than the global average over the next five years," she says, adding "The launch of 3G services in much of the region means that its Internet market is now on the brink of a similar makeover as when the advent of mobile communications famously and dramatically transformed AME's voice telecommunications sector."

Mobile broadband operators are of course keen to take advantage of these prime conditions, which Pyramid predict will result in Africa and the Middle East leading the world in terms of percentage of broadband subscriptions which are mobile.