{"id":51329,"date":"2012-05-30T10:03:47","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T08:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=51329"},"modified":"2012-05-30T10:05:32","modified_gmt":"2012-05-30T08:05:32","slug":"sa-internet-penetration-lagging-behind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/51329-sa-internet-penetration-lagging-behind.html","title":{"rendered":"SA internet penetration lagging behind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Internet penetration in South Africa, the continent&#8217;s economic powerhouse, is low compared to other leading economies in Africa due to high broadband cost and a lack of infrastructure, a study said Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>According to the study commissioned by <a title=\"Google\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/314567-Google\">Google<\/a> South Africa, the country had 8.5 million internet users in 2011, compared to 6.8 million people in 2010.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This growth brings internet penetration in South Africa to approximately 17 percent,&#8221; said the report.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Despite rapid growth, however, it lags significantly behind the biggest internet user bases in Africa&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Oil-rich Nigeria, which is also Africa&#8217;s most populous nation, has the highest internet penetration at 29 percent, followed by Egypt, Morocco and Kenya.<\/p>\n<p>Growth in South Africa, the continent&#8217;s largest economy was attributed to the propagation of smartphones to access the internet, which took off in 2008.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It should also be borne in mind that access and cost remains the biggest obstable to internet connectivity, particularly in less developed areas,&#8221; said <a title=\"Luke Mckend\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/271739-Luke-Mckend\">Luke Mckend<\/a>, Google SA country manager.<\/p>\n<p>This year&#8217;s arrival of an undersea fibre-optic cable, which connects large parts of Africa with the world was expected to improve broadband connectivity across the continent.<\/p>\n<p>The cable has landing points in 10 other countries along Africa&#8217;s western coast and its arrival promises an Internet boost for Africa, where only 9.6 percent of people are web users, compared to 65 percent of Europeans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Internet penetration in South Africa, the continent&#8217;s economic powerhouse, is low compared to other leading economies in Africa due to high broadband cost and a lack of infrastructure, a study said Tuesday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":30786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[36,167,1970],"class_list":["post-51329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-active","tag-google","tag-luke-mckend"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51329"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51331,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51329\/revisions\/51331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}