GPRS/EDGE access growing fast
The media recently highlighted the fact that around only 3.85-million people — just one in 12 South Africans — are expected to have access to the internet by the end of 2007. This constitutes a yearly growth rate of only 3%.
This poor Internet access increase is in spite of the fast growth of broadband locally, which paints a grim picture for the IT and online environment in South Africa.
This is of concern, as it means that with the very low broadband penetration rate of 1.2% the digital divide between South Africa and the developed world has widened substantially over the last year.
GPRS/EDGE access increasing
GPRS and mobile broadband growth paints a far better picture. While the number of fixed lines in South Africa has been declining steadily over the last few years, the mobile phone penetration rate has been increasing rapidly over the same period.
This increased mobile phone penetration is accompanied by an increase in the use of GPRS, EDGE, 3G and HSDPA through standard data enabled handsets and mobile broadband modems. The rapid uptake of 3G/HSDPA in South Africa is well known, but unfortunately GPRS and EDGE are taking a backseat to the newer and faster successors.
Vodacom, MTN and Cell C all have well developed GPRS and EDGE networks, and millions of users are accessing the Internet and other services using these data networks. Vodacom’s voice and GPRS infrastructure covers an estimated 97.9% of the population, with MTN showing similar figures.
Cell C’s network is now 100% EDGE enabled, with each of Cell C’s 2 170 base station in the country supporting GPRS and EDGE.
Over the last year Vodacom’s GPRS users increased to 2.8 million, a 100% increase from its 2006 total of 1.4 million users. The mobile provider currently has 899 000 Vodafone live! Users – a significant increase over 2006’s 351 000 users.
Cell C has shown similar growth to Vodacom. “Since the introduction of mobile internet in November 2005 Cell C has seen good growth in both subscriber usage and billing. Currently more that 11% of Cell C’s subscribers access our mobile internet services on a monthly basis,” Cell C said.
MTN did not supply any figures regarding their GPRS-EDGE usage but the company previously said that they had cracked the 1 Million GPRS usage figure.
So while standard PC based Internet access may not be making much progress, GPRS/EDGE enabled mobile phones are giving millions of South Africans access to a variety of online services.
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