Broadband War: The winners and losers

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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Over the last few years the South African broadband landscape changed significantly with Telkom ceeding dominance in the high speed Internet market and mobile broadband connections taking over as the most popular Internet access technology.

South Africa’s broadband market is however something of an anomaly in the global broadband community.  Internationally nearly all broadband connections are fixed line services – 60% DSL, 29% cable modem and 11% fibre and LAN according to the latest OECD broadband figures.

Locally mobile broadband connections – typically 3G/HSDPA services – dominate subscriber numbers with nearly three times as many subscriptions as ADSL. 

The reason for the high mobile broadband uptake and poor ADSL performance in South Africa comes down to competition, says World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck.

Goldstuck points out that the number of wireless broadband connections grew by 88% in 2009, around four times higher than the 21% growth in ADSL subscriber numbers.

Goldstuck points out, in jest, that there is four times more competition in the South African cellular market than in the ADSL space.  He said that the lesson in South Africa is simple:  To increase penetration rates vigorous competition is needed.

The absence of competition in the ADSL market may well have hurt Telkom.  Their lackluster performance not only means that the company has fallen behind in terms of subscriber numbers, but the number of new ADSL sigh-ups have also declined over the last two years. 

The following table provides an overview of the latest broadband subscriber numbers in South Africa:

SA broadband winners and losers << comments and views