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'Mobile broadband increases video streaming'

By , IT in government editor
Africa , 02 Mar 2015

'Mobile broadband increases video streaming'

Today people mostly use mobile broadband to view video content, says Ericsson chief executive officer Hans Vestberg.

Vestberg was speaking at a media briefing at the 2015 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and explained that more people are using mobile broadband to stream video content.

According to Ericsson's Consumer Lab report consumers between the ages of 16-45 years want to view streamed video instead of traditional TV.

The report further revealed that African online video consumption would increase by 55% per year until the end of 2019.

"Majority of traffic on networks is video content at the moment," he said.

Vestberg added, "The only thing we know for sure is that voice will be the smallest service in the networks."

There are now 2.9 billion mobile broadband subscribers in the world with the last billion added in less than two years, he explained.

Vestberg also noted in 2015 they expect 70% of the world's population to have mobile broadband coverage.

Furthermore, video will generate half of mobile data traffic in the world, and more people will watch streamed on demand video content than broadcast TV on a weekly basis.

Streamed video content is gaining traction in Africa with services like Nollywood's distribution website, iROKOtv, gaining popularity.

Since its launch in 2010 iROKOtv attracts more than 1 million unique visitors every single month, watching from 178 countries like the US, UK and Canada, as well as Malaysia, Thailand and Hungary.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that subscription video on demand service, Nextflix would launch its services in South Africa.

A date regarding the launch of Netflix services in the southern African country has not been revealed.

During his address Vestberg made note to the road towards 5G and stated "it is not here but a lot of things are happening in 5G".

Ericsson has announced that it will be doing its first commercial 5G test in July 2015.

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