South Africa Connect

Arthur Goldstuck presenting on the state of broadband access in South Africa, during the first session of the S.A. National Broadband Forum

Arthur Goldstuck was the first speaker to kick off the SA National Broadband Forum, by providing an introduction to the importance of, and key challenges facing broadband development in SA. He presented ‘further findings’ from World Wide Worx’s Internet Access in S.A. 2008 report, which the company is officially releasing today. The company usually resists forecasting for more than a year ahead but for the first time they have ‘stuck their necks out’ to include long-term trends on internet access and usage in South Africa, with predictions up to 2013. Goldstuck noted that the predictions were based on a ‘fairly good case scenario’ for growth in the coming years.

At the moment South Africa has 1.058 millions unique broadband users, with the explosion of wireless broadband making a huge contribution to internet access in South Africa in the last few years. Interestingly, Goldstuck showed how Telkom prices for broadband access have consistently decreased, though from August ’07 no further price decreases have taken place.

With the huge growth in ADSL and wireless access, Goldstuck predicted the “death of dial-up”, he says that within 3 years dial-up will no longer be offered as a commercial offering, and no marketing spend will be allocated here.

There is certainly more to come – using this map, Goldstuck spoke about the many developments that the laying of underwater cables will provide for Africa and South Africa. At the moment we access the internet at 0.8 gigabytes per second, but with the laying of the Seacom cable (to be completed by June ’09), we’ll improve to 2.58 gigabytes per second. The ultimate goal, as predicted by Goldstuck - 10.5 terabytes per second in 2013.

According to Goldstuck there are four main drivers to affordable broadband access taking S.A. by storm. Firstly, as undersea cables are laid, ISPs will start having more flexible pricing schemes as they are freed from commitments to Telkom. This is predicted to only largely benefit the end-user after two years, though small decreases should start taking place before then.

This will also drop the barrier to entry for new ISPs, the second driver to affordable broadband. Small operators will be able to buy large-scale fiber capacity, giving them the opportunity to compete with the larger, more established ISPs.

Thirdly, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are playing a very important role in getting people connected to the internet, with 3,500 additional people being connected to the internet at work last year alone. As broadband access becomes more affordable, SMEs will provide an important platform for getting people connected to the net through their offices.

Cell phone connectivity is the fourth driver, though Goldstuck mentioned that this is not as significant as the media hype created around it. Interestingly, Goldstuck mentioned how there is a huge amount of ‘accidental’ access through cell phones – as people come across this quite accidentally, and don’t really understand how to effectively utilize the service on their phone. Cell phone access contributed 450,000 new users this year, but is set to grow exponentially by 2013, as we see cell phones being built to allow better access, and as people start discovering and building their experience in accessing the internet on their cell phones.

In summary, the forecast for broadband access in South Africa looks upbeat with a dramatic increase in the next five years. As Goldstuck mentioned in the beginning – this is a ‘good case scenario’ as more and more people are finding alternative ways of connecting to the net. This scenario would be an even better scenario if government were to get involved and take active steps to get South Africans connected as digital citizens, as both consumers and creators on the internet.

As a final comment, Goldstuck showed a music map of the world, which represents access to affordable digital content for entertainment purposes – the U.S. takes a large proportion with European countries coming in soon after – South Africa is shown as an almost invisible sliver. This also represents what Goldstuck calls the ‘access’ divide – it is not only about access to affordable broadband but use of this broadband that needs to be considered to make South Africans active participants on the worldwide web.