Africa nears saturation point for mobile players

"In South Africa for example, the issue of interconnection has resulted in a less competitive GSM market with smaller operators unable to offer lower prices due to high interconnect fees they had to pay to larger and more dominant players like MTN and Vodacom; some of the regulatory issues nearly bankrupted operators and certainly discouraged further investment," Valoyi added.

Whether the market has reached saturation or not, from a service provider perspective, the direction of African telecom favors revamping of management structures to focus more of data and converged services.