ADSL – SA versus Morocco
Morocco has taken the lead in Africa’s broadband market and the reason becomes clear when looking at their ADSL offerings.
Morocco’s Menara offers a 128 Kbps service with unlimited usage for R 129 per month. Telkom in comparison offers a 384 Kbps service with a 1 GB monthly usage limit at R 199 per month.
When moving to the high end of the market Telkom’s 4 Mbps DSL service with a 3 GB usage limit at R 652 per month is cheaper than Menara’s 20 Mbps service at R1 004, but since Moroccans get to enjoy the freedom of unlimited bandwidth the value proposition is far higher.
A more accurate way to compare prices is to look at Cost/Mbps/GB. Here Telkom’s 4 Mbps ADSL service is around 10 000% more expensive than Menara’s 20 Mbps service.
Lower GDP per capita & number of fixed lines
While the speed and pricing differentials should be enough to convince most observers that something is amiss in South Africa, the most telling factors may lie in Morocco’s GDP and number of fixed lines.
Copper lines are vital for provisioning ADSL since they are the pipes that deliver this service. South Africa has around 4.6 Million fixed lines which far out strips Morocco’s 1.3 Million fixed lines.
Despite having nearly 4 times more fixed lines than Morocco, South Africa has far fewer ADSL subscribers.
Another possible reason that one may use to try to explain why Morocco beats SA in the broadband race is because Moroccans are more affluent.
But this argument also holds no sway since Morocco has an average GDP per capita of $4 600 which means they generally have far less disposable income than South Africans with a GDP per capita of $13 300.
The simple truth is that South Africa’s ADSL services are extremely expensive for what you get, and this has hampered the uptake of ADSL since the service was launched in 2002.
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