Africa, Middle East and the Americas

Chapter 7 is inevitably something of a job lot insofar that it contains information on operators in three regions. In the case of Africa, the geographic boundaries are clear-cut but there are relatively few entries—only 16 of the 56 countries/islands merit an entry and only South Africa merits a reasonably detailed analysis. In practice, this is exactly the same as happened in the case of 3G as average incomes in the region are generally too low to sustain expensive data packages. The Middle East is a much more amorphous region, and in this case it has had to be defined, somewhat unsatisfactorily, to include all those countries not covered in other chapters. Once again, only one country, Bahrain, strictly merits an in-depth analysis even though it is geographically very small. As for the Americas, this is again something of a catch-all in that—apart, obviously, from excluding the USA—it ranges from Canada to the southern tip of South America and all points in-between including a number of small islands. Predictably, Brazil and Canada merit the most attention and, in general, these regions are followers rather than leaders in the race to establish LTE.l.