As voice traffic continued to be overtaken by data traffic, recording in excess of 60% year-on-year growth, long-term evolution (LTE) was increasingly becoming a key platform for mobile operators to regain lost ground.

However, South African mobile operators had done all they could in rolling out the next-generation technology without access to much-needed spectrum, Vodacom head of department: consumer data Jannie van Zyl said on Tuesday.

He added that the Department of Communications (DoC) and the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) were hampering the further roll-out of the latest technology.

"We have done all we can; it is now up to the Minister [of Communications Dina Pule] and Icasa [to release the spectrum]," he said.

Mobile operators Vodacom and MTN had launched their LTE networks, and others, such as 8ta and Cell C continued trials of the technology on refarmed 1 800 Mhz spectrum – which was “far from optimal” – in anticipation of the release of the 2.6 GHz and 800 MHz spectrum from Icasa.

Speaking at the Satcom Conference, in Sandton, Van Zyl said the release of the spectrum had been stalled over the past two years.

In her Budget Vote speech earlier this month, Pule said the DoC would table its revised National Broadband Policy for South Africa with Cabinet in June, adding that the finalisation of the policy would enable Icasa to licence the 2.6 GHz and 800 MHz band spectrum.

Mobile operators were battling under flat revenues and increasingly high bandwidth-data demand, particularly from cloud services and video-on-demand, as 20-billion devices become connected.

Further, as "The Internet of Things" - wherein everything that could be connected, would be connected - came on stream, LTE was increasingly becoming an important technology evolution.

"There is no substitute for spectrum," said Van Zyl, adding that all the technologies would complement one another.

LTE, or 3.9 G was the evolutionary point for the transition from third-generation (3G) to fourth-generation networks, which comprised LTE-advanced and Wireless Metropolitan Area Network-advanced technologies.

LTE adoption was rising rapidly, with 424 operators in 126 countries migrating from 3G to LTE networks. Van Zyl noted that, worldwide, 175 LTE networks had been commercially launched to date.

In Africa, nine LTE networks were deployed in six countries, with another 24 mobile operators in 17 countries on the continent planning, trialling or rolling out such networks.

In October, Vodacom had become the first South African operator to commercially launch LTE and had since increased its LTE-enabled base stations from 70 to 611.

Within six months, the group had accumulated in excess of 200 000 LTE subscribers.