Ericsson has declared Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology as essential in improving the quality of services being offered by telecoms companies operating in Nigeria, offering companies the ability to offer a wider variety of services.
Lars Liden, the Head and President of Ericsson sub-Saharan Africa, said in an interview with The Guardian in South Africa that in addition to providing connectivity where smartphones or computers are used, LTE can also support more operations than previously imagined.
He therefore advised network service providers operating in Nigeria to embrace LTE to further consolidate recent developments in voice communication. He said the introduction of LTE would be an evolutionary step that would provide a path allowing flexible migration of services between 2G, 3G and 4G mobile technologies.
Airtel Nigeria recently announced the successful completion of an LTE trial in Lagos and said it was ready to test in other major cities.
Liden admitted that Nigeria has few telecoms companies considering the size of the market in the country, which has 160 million inhabitants.
“The number of players for such a big market is still relatively low,” Liden said. “If you exclude the CDMA operators, we only have four big ones with such a huge population in the country. I think that’s still small, but it comes with its advantages.
“However, there are some countries in Africa that have about two to three million inhabitants and up to seven operators. That is rather tough, but in Nigeria, the market is still open for more players and many other good things.”
