Africa And LTE #1: Inbound Roamers (Or Tourists To You And Me)

Summary: Africa is upgrading to next-generation mobile networks. Tourism is one of the reasons why.

Something amazing happened when I first went to Australia back in 1999. When the plane landed and I turned on my phone, I got a text message from Vodafone Australia welcoming me to the country and encouraging me to stay on the network. Of course now this is commonplace – but back then, it was almost magical.

Back in those days, the concept of preferring roaming partners was in its infancy. When you entered a new country, your phone would more often-than-not randomly connect to a local network. Even though I was a Vodafone UK subscriber, my phone might have randomly decided to connect to Telstra as well as several other networks as I moved in and out of coverage during my stay.