A new data usage report from Mobidia Technologies in Africa revealed that the telecommunications industry is grossly underestimating the extent of Wi-Fi usage in South Africa.<\/p>\n
The report is based on research which analysed statistics derived directly from thousands of smartphones and tablets across the mobile operators.<\/p>\n
The main finding of the research was that Wi-Fi data usage exceeds that of mobile by three times.<\/p>\n
Christopher Geerdts, sales director for Mobidia Technologies in Africa, said that the result of this under-estimation of Wi-Fi was \u201ca massive under-investment in an opportunity which is growing undetected\u201d.<\/p>\n
According to Geerdts, local operators and vendors were usually making estimates largely based on Mobidia\u2019s published statistics from other countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though these statistics are drawn from dozens of countries, and millions of devices, there has always been an assumption that the Wi-Fi portion of total usage in South Africa was lower than global benchmarks,\u201d said Geerdts.<\/p>\n
\u201cBusiness analysts believed that countries in Europe, Asia, and North America had more advanced Wi-Fi usage patterns, and so these analysts were estimating a very conservative split of around 50-55% traffic ascribed to Wi-Fi, rather than the 75% now recorded by Mobidia.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that this large under-estimation had resulted in an under-investment into the commercial hotspot opportunity, leaving two main operators – Telkom and Always On – and one large vendor (Cisco) to ride the wave of uptake.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe statistics confirm that customers use private networks – home and work Wi-Fi points – for most of their data downloads,\u201d said Geerdts.<\/p>\n