The African continent continues to expand technologically at a rapid pace. The ITU estimates that approximately 16 percent of the African population now has access to devices that can connect to the Internet. The challenge must be for infrastructure to keep up with the growing demand. World Bank statistics shows that in emerging markets for every 10 percent growth in broadband access there is a result of 1.4 percent growth in GDP. Broadband Internet is now essential to the development of emerging markets.

Following the success of LTE TDD in China, Japan and very soon Sprint in the USA, YooMee Africa is pioneering the usage of the technology in Sub-Saharan Africa. After initially successfully launching a WiMAX16e network in Cameroon, in 2011, the company is now preparing to launch in Cote d’Ivoire.

In Cote d’Ivoire, YooMee Africa has built the first TD-LTE network purely for Internet services, initially covering the capital city of Abidjan. Using the same technology as China gives YooMee Africa the potential to expand the network quickly and also keep usage costs low, to live up to their mission of closing the digital divide in Sub Saharan Africa. The service will offer high quality Internet to both residential and business users. Currently in Cote d’Ivoire Internet users suffer from limited, slow and unstable connections. The YooMee Africa service will hopefully kick-start the market, so Ivoirians can benefit from fast, stable, state of the art and cost effective Internet connections as a norm.

It is important that quality and low cost Internet services are available widely in Africa and market competition develops so that people throughout society can utilize technology others take for granted. Socially, the impact of broadband Internet is huge for Sub Saharan Africa, especially with opportunities in E-education, E-health and E-government. It will allow even the smallest agricultural trader to keep in regular contact with their potential market.

In Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, YooMee just showed that these networks can be rolled out very quickly. In only two months, major parts of the city areas fitted with last generation mobile access technology and customers can access the Internet on the move. YooMee have taken on the responsibility of closing the digital divide and enabling a faster and more stable Internet access. If past successes are anything to go by, the rest of Sub Saharan Africa can expect to soon be connected to the world at comparable speeds.