The real face of the Internet in SA

This is a very poor report. You can't take 1589 people and expect them to satisfactorily represent the majority of South Africans.
I can find around 10 other fatal flaws in this report. I wonder if whoever led the survey realizes just how badly it was done?

Survey result: The majority of Internet users are now young, black and live on less than R1,500 a month
I seriously beg to differ.
 
froot said:
This is a very poor report. You can't take 1589 people and expect them to satisfactorily represent the majority of South Africans.
I can find around 10 other fatal flaws in this report. I wonder if whoever led the survey realizes just how badly it was done?

Survey result: The majority of Internet users are now young, black and live on less than R1,500 a month
I seriously beg to differ.
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It depends on the research methodology used. If the researchers chose their samples properly, you can. This is how election pollsters are able to accurately predict results using very small samples.
 
The private sector is a wonderful thing. Competition is even a more wonderful thing. Completely foreign concepts to the government... they would prefer to follow the opposite and nationalize everything.. with the complete opposite effect so that everything can go the african way... nice and backwards where everybody shares in everybody elses misery....

Maybe they could learn something from this and do the same with eskom and telkom.
 
froot said:
This is a very poor report. You can't take 1589 people and expect them to satisfactorily represent the majority of South Africans.
Click to expand...

Yes you can. A sample size of 1000 is more then enough.
 
Almost three quarters of them use their phones to go online
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Someone earning less than 1.5k a month is guaranteed to have a craptastic phone. Not sure I'd call that experience "the internet".
 
How do they afford to connect?
MTN & Vodacom charge R2.00/MB,
So if they spend their full R1500, they can access 750MB.
It's a luxury most can't afford.
 
We can safely discredit the numbers based on this statement alone:

The top five reasons for first going online are: to get information, to socialise, for study, for work or business and to look for a job.
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You something is wrong when porn doesn't make the top 5 :D. Unless, it's now classified as "getting information" :p.
 
This is a very poor report. You can't take 1589 people and expect them to satisfactorily represent the majority of South Africans.
I can find around 10 other fatal flaws in this report. I wonder if whoever led the survey realizes just how badly it was done?

Survey result: The majority of Internet users are now young, black and live on less than R1,500 a month
I seriously beg to differ.
Click to expand...

We had an independent researcher go over the methodology and it isn't flawed, it's basically in line with what's happening in the rest of Africa. If you doubt the report you should look at the Rise of the African Consumer Report from Mckinsey

And the people earning R1,500 p/m and using it in the internet aren't actually as dumb as people might assume them to be. In South Africa people earning that amount of money will save to buy a Blackberry in order to get free data. They also have much more innovative ways of sharing and getting data, if you doubt that you should read this report
 
Based on the items on the list Internet cafes and so on are a medium of access. The survey may be deficient in not giving a correlation of income and scope of access. Sadly i do suspect that fuller Internet usage will come in with incomes above 7k

Basically I think what people and government tries to mean with "broadband" has an income barrier - with exceptions, students for example. So yes the face of access to the Internet (public access facilities, BIS, etc ...) may be improving a digital divide for broadband which can fuel opportunities is still limited.
 
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If by 'Internet' they mean Opera mini + EDGE, then I guess you can believe this.
 
HavocXphere said:
Someone earning less than 1.5k a month is guaranteed to have a craptastic phone. Not sure I'd call that experience "the internet".
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That's just making arbitrary standards up. Internet is the internet, it's WWW, chat, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Whether you do it on a 30 inch 2560 by 1600 display or a 320 x 240 LCD cell phone, it's the same thing. It's like saying a Toyota Taz is not a car and should not be counted because some people drive Porshes and Ferraris.
 
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