Telkom’s broadband plans on the money
Ericsson released its second Traffic and Market Report, called “On the Pulse of the Networked Society”, predicting that 85 percent of the world’s population will have 3G coverage by 2017, and 50 percent of the world’s population will be covered by 4G in the same year.
Other predictions from the report include smartphone subscriptions expected to reach 3 billion, and that global data traffic will grow 15 times by the end of 2017.
“Mobile broadband subscriptions, meanwhile, are forecast to reach five billion in 2017, compared to one billion by the end of 2011,” the Ericsson report stated.
“The main continuous trend identified in the report is that everything is going mobile. This evolution is mainly being driven by people’s increasing demand for anywhere, anytime connectivity and the use of video, cloud-based services and the internet – but also by machine-to-machine connectivity.”
Subscriptions development – fixed and mobile
According to the Ericsson Traffic and Market Report, the number of fixed PSTN voice subscriptions will continue its downward trend as users increasingly switch to mobile and VoIP substitutions.
This trend is accentuated in South Africa where Telkom lost nearly 1 million subscribers over the last decade (down from 4,924,000 in 2002 to 3,995,000 in March 2012).
Good news for Telkom is that there will be continued growth in fixed line broadband numbers, as shown in the graph below.
Fixed and mobile subscriptions 2008-2017
With the predicted continued decline in fixed narrowband voice services (hence the majority of Telkom’s 4 million fixed line subscribers), and the growth in fixed broadband subscribers (hence Telkom’s ADSL services which currently stands at 827,091), it is logical for Telkom to focus on its fixed broadband services.
Telkom is doing exactly that. The company has embarked on a massive ‘Network Transformation Initiative’ which includes upgrading the existing access network with new-generation VDSL2 technology, serving 4.4 million subscribers.
Telkom’s is transforming its network to provide far higher speed broadband services over their existing copper infrastructure, as well as preparing for future fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) offerings.
The graph further shows the massive growth expected in mobile broadband subscriber numbers, and this is another area which Telkom is focusing on.
Telkom CFO and Telkom Mobile acting head, Jacques Schindehutte said that it is not a good strategy to try to compete head-on against Vodacom and MTN in the mobile voice market, and that 8ta’s future lies in data.
According to Schindehutte, 8ta is building a robust mobile data network, and is crafting a niche for itself where it can bring a superior offering to its subscribers.
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