Over the two-day event, which attracted most operators and vendors active in Africa, Ericsson gave a series of presentations on the company's site-reducing network solution for high-growth markets: Expander. Hendrik Bredenkamp, Ericsson mobile systems manager for sub-Saharan Africa, presented a case study showing how Expander had helped an operator to reduce site numbers from 53 to 41. This allowed the operator to roll out its network at an overall cost of EUR 4.75 per user each month, which translated into a 20 percent net profit.

Bredenkamp explained how Ericsson's focus in Africa is on making deployment commercially viable for operators so they can reach the large potential subscriber base there. "Ericsson understands that it is difficult for operators to roll out cost-effective solutions in the challenging African environment," Bredenkamp said. "This is why we've put together the Expander toolbox, which minimizes the total cost of ownership for operators by lowering the number of sites in a network. Through Expander, we hope to help operators reach the second billion African users."

Ericsson also played the spotlight on its technology leadership by being the only vendor at the conference to give live demonstrations of 3G, EDGE, Push-to-Talk and enterprise applications. The company sees a bright future in Africa for both 3G and EDGE, with usage moving towards wireless broadband. Operators in Africa are already starting to use EDGE as a bearer to tackle the DSL market, as well as to differentiate themselves in the face of increasing competition.

Africa is the world's fastest growing mobile communications market, with more than 150 million subscribers expected by 2007. During the next two years, Ericsson predicts that the subscriber bases in Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania will grow by 6 million, 5 million and 2.5 million respectively. The company also believes that northern African countries such as Morocco, Egypt, Libya, Algeria and Tunisia offer huge growth potential.

Ericsson has recently been selected by MTN South Africa to supply a 3G/WCDMA network. With 3G from MTN, subscribers will be able to experience high bandwidth services such as video telephony, mobile music and TV, as well as wireless broadband Internet access. Read more here.