By Prince Osuagwu,  who was in Cape Town , South Africa

One of the revelations of  the just concluded AfricaCom conference in Cape Town South Africa was that the African mobile market has exceeded  half a billion subscribers during the third quarter of this year.

Research by Informa Telecoms and Media, organisers of the event said that the market hit 506 million subscribers at the end of September, 2010.

According to the research  the milestone coincided with the 25th anniversary of mobile telephony in African continent. The first African mobile network went live in 1985 in Tunisia .

It also recounted that at the end of the first quarter of this year, GSM subscribers in the continent accounted for 10 percent of the global subscriber base with penetration still very low, though it increased by 18 per cent in the first quarter of this year.

It was also gathered that GSM penetration rate in Africa stood at 48.35 per cent at the end of September, and some Africa market have since passed saturation point.

“But penetration in other market is still less than five per cent, and penetration below ten per cent is typical for rural areas,”
The research said that the strongest growth rates in mobile subscription are expected to be recorded mainly in East and Central African markets, adding that Ethiopia , Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea and Madagascar are expected to witness increase by more than 100 per cent in 2015.

“Although, the rate of growth in mobile subscription in Africa will be slow as markets mature, the continent continues to offer great opportunities for investors in the voice segment in under penetrated market and also in the non_voice segment with mobile broadband and mobile money services taking off,” said Thecla Mbongue, Johannesburg_based senior analyst at Informa and Telecom Media.

According to findings, the landing of a series of new submarine cables on both the East and West coasts of Africa over the past 18 months has given the continent a good level of international connectivity for the first time, and has greatly expanded the opportunities for data services.

It further stated that an increase in data services would cause a bottleneck in terrestrial backhaul networks and that these networks needed to improve if connectivity was going to be made available to more African, particularly those in the rural rears.

“ By 2015, there will be 265 million mobile broadband subscription in Africa, a huge increase from the current figure of about 12 million and accounting for 31.5 per cent of the total of 842 million mobile subscriptions that the continent will have in five years’ time Mbongue said, adding: “There will be almost 360 million users of mobile-money services on the continent by 2014.”

The research further showed that with household broadband in penetration in Africa at just 2.5 per cent, the opportunities for mobile data access services on the continent are significant.