About 75% of mobile subscriptions in the Middle East and North East Africa are still GSM/EDGE technology, according to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report.

In terms of the Ericsson report the Middle East and North East Africa region consists of 23 countries and more than 760 million people.

For the North East Africa region the report covers countries such as Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti.

And in the report it was revealed that GSM would continue to be the most commonly used mobile technology in the North East Africa region up until 2020.

According to the Mobility Report the reason that GSM is still popular in the region is that a large proportion of lower income consumers have handsets that only work with that technology.

“Some people only use GSM as they don’t subscribe to a data plan, despite having multi-access technology handsets,” reads the report.

Speaking to ITWeb Africa earlier this year Omasan Ogisi, head of sustainability and corporate responsibility for Ericsson sub-Saharan Africa said that many parts of the continent still rely on 2G networks for connections.

Ogisi noted that the region (sub-Saharan Africa) would continue to have GSM networks as the main technology for coverage, and will cover the 80% of the region by 2019.
However, 3G connections will rise and surpass 2G connections by 2019, she told ITWeb Africa.

The report further highlights that WCDMA/HSPA technology will take over by 2020, and account for over 40% of total subscriptions up from almost 25% in 2014.

And regarding long term evolution (LTE) or 4G networks the report noted that around 40% of countries in the region have launched LTE, but the technology only accounts for around 1% of subscriptions most of which are concentrated in the Gulf countries.

LTE subscriptions are however, expected to triple during 2015 and reach 210 million by the end of 2020, equating to around 20% of all mobile subscriptions.