LTE Africa creates connected communities

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA: As LTE subscriptions in Africa continue to grow, and with 50 percent of the population expected to be covered by LTE networks by 2018, LTE stands to change the region’s communication landscape forever.

With this in mind, this year’s LTE Africa event, which will be co-located with AfricaCom2014, the continent’s largest telecommunications event, provides the perfect setting to bring together the pan-African LTE ecosystem.

The three-day conference and exhibition (November 11-13, Cape Town) will explore the key contributing factors for LTE success, including the development of sustainable business models, the need for enhanced spectrum management and backhaul optimisation.

The conference kicks off with a speech from Safaricom’s CTO, Thibaud Rerolle, who will showcase the key factors for LTE Success for Kenya. Following this, the session provides an overview of the practical challenges hindering LTE deployment and how these can be solved.

A panel on overcoming the obstacles of successful LTE deployment will be attended by senior representatives from Airtel Africa, Surfline Communications, Alcatel Lucent, MTC Namibia and Smile Communications. The first day of the event also includes a dedicated session led by the 3GPP addressing a range of important standardisation issues.

Closing the day, speakers from China Communications Services and Telkom Mobile will focus on the opportunities and challenges of TD-LTE in Africa, including combining TD-LTE and FD-LTE networks, using TD-LTE as a differentiator and the opportunities for spectrum efficiency with TD-LTE.