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Internet access in SA shows steady growth
| Rudolph Muller | July 29, 2010 | No comments |
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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Research by BMI-TechKnowledge reveals that South Africa is showing steady growth in Internet access and usage
Whilst some countries have made internet access a basic human right, South Africa is yet to go that far, but internet users are continuing to grow rapidly, with an expected annual increase of 16% in the base of individual PC internet users this year.
According to the latest research by BMI-TechKnowledge, the number of PC internet users in South Africa at the end of 2009 was approximately 4.9 million, and is set to grow to 5.9 million by the end of 2010.
Findings indicate that the primary place of access is the workplace, followed by the home, and then other locations such as places of education.
According to Ryan Smit, author of the report, the PC growth will pale beside the growth of handset internet usage, where the number of consumers that actively use the mobile internet browsers on their cellphones is expected to increase from around 7.1 million to over 18 million in the next 5 years.
This is facilitated by the observation that by 2014, 36.5 million people in South Africa will have at least a GPRS enabled cellphone, giving them the option to actively use the mobile internet.
“In terms of PC internet usage, activities such as watching television online and video calling are still in the early adoption stages, whilst other activities such as online dating and online gambling have started to experience strong growth as they move up the growth curve. With the introduction of uncapped ADSL accounts aimed at residential users, the rate of increase of high-bandwidth applications is likely to accelerate, meaning that broadband networks will start to strain under increasing pressure”, says Smit.
Much of the growth in certain internet activities will come through the increase in the internet user base, rather than an increase in the range of activities of users.
For example, while most internet users are already using social networking, we still expect social networking users to grow by 31% year-on-year as more South Africans become internet users.
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