{"id":551915,"date":"2007-04-01T10:27:01","date_gmt":"2007-04-01T10:27:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/551915-yebo-gogo.html"},"modified":"2007-04-01T10:27:01","modified_gmt":"2007-04-01T10:27:01","slug":"yebo-gogo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/551915-yebo-gogo.html","title":{"rendered":"Yebo gogo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cNow we sign up that many customers every month,\u201d said Vodacom CEO Alan Knott-Craig.<\/font><\/p>\n

Although there are no official figures on the exact value of the multi- billion rand mobile phone industry, a good indication of its value is the percentage of GDP its revenue represents. Two percent is considered good. In South Africa the industry accounts for well over 3.5% of GDP.<\/font><\/p>\n

There are about 35 million SIM cards in circulation in South Africa and up to 90% of these represent individual subscribers. It is estimated that there are about 30 million cellphone users in the country. Vodacom, with around 22 million customers, has nearly 60% of the industry\u2019s market share.<\/font><\/p>\n

The first people to use cellphones in South Africa were Independent Electoral Commission officials prior to the elections in 1994. The floodgates opened in June that year and cellphone networks scrambled to keep up with the demand for the technology.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cUntil then mobile telephony was staggeringly expensive,\u201d said Knott- Craig. \u201cYou could pay about R13000 for a cellphone and the call charges were astronomical. Cellphone technology slashed the costs of mobile telephony and opened up this fantastic communications resource to, as it turns out, most of South Africa\u2019s population.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cContrary to conventional belief, call tariffs today are actually cheaper than they were in 1994. Entry-level cellphone costs have come down significantly, too, and you can now pick up a cellphone for as little as R500 or less, despite the rand having gone from R3 to the dollar in 1994 to levels upwards of R7 right now,\u201d he said.<\/font><\/p>\n

Knott-Craig added that a growing number of large businesses were looking to cellular networks to sell them complete telecommunications solutions.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cUp until now traditional fixed-line operators have been providing these solutions, but companies are increasingly asking their cellular network operators and service providers to take care of everything from voice calls to data traffic.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cHowever,\u201d he said, \u201ca big challenge is the availability of short-haul, long-haul and international bandwidth. Controlling voice traffic over a network is relatively easy. But data is incredibly resource-hungry and volumes are growing quickly. We need more basic bandwidth because resources are under strain. <\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is particularly important to significantly improve mobile data resources in time for the 2010 Soccer World Cup because people will expect to be able to move lots of data over the air quickly.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n

Historically, mobile network operators had to buy their links from Telkom so they didn\u2019t build their own and weren\u2019t allowed to, according to regulations.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cIf everybody had been able to build infrastructure we wouldn\u2019t have this problem,\u201d said Knott-Craig. \u201cHowever, as the telecommunications industry becomes more deregulated, we should be able to solve most, if not all, bandwidth issues. <\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cThat said, we are more bullish about the growth of the industry than we have ever been before. We are seeing increased voice traffic, and the growth curve on data traffic is phenomenal. <\/font><\/p>\n

\u2018\u2018Most of the data traffic will be driven by companies, both big and small, as they look for new and innovative ways to use mobile devices in their businesses,\u201d he said.<\/font><\/p>\n

Comments<\/a><\/p>\n

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When the cellphone networks were switched on commercially on June 1 1994 analysts predicted there would be 250000 Vodacom customers in the first 10 years of operations. Numbers reached that level in the first year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"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":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-551915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551915"}],"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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}