SA's mobile net is growing quickly

The country's mobile Internet landscape is seeing healthy growth, with major changes in access and services coming in the next year or two, says Konstantinos Tzingakis, head of innovations and partnering at Ericsson.

“Mobile Internet in SA is growing without a doubt, in many different areas,” he notes. “As more people get access to the mobile Web with more handsets, better phones and better applications, you'll also see increasingly sophisticated services,” adds Tzingakis.

He says local operators are making great progress in deploying high-speed networks, citing BWired's roll-out of fibre in Johannesburg as an example. The project, a joint initiative by Ericsson and the City of Johannesburg, involves the laying of 900km of fibre to bring greater connectivity to underserviced areas.

However, Tzingakis adds there is still some uncertainty among consumers surrounding what to use high-speed access for. “Most people use their cellphones for calls, so Edge works just as well as 3G. People aren't always aware of what's available and there aren't enough services yet, so we're still playing a bit of catch-up.”

Similar observations were made in a recent World Wide Worx study, which found that while the use of mobile Internet services has exploded in SA, less than half of urban cellphone users with Internet-capable phones use the Web.

The 'mobile Internet in SA 2010' study, released last month, shows almost all urban cellphone users have WAP-capable phones, and a high number use that capability to access Web-based content regularly, although many didn't realise they were doing so.
“Usage of specific applications like Mxit and Facebook Mobile far outpace browsing on the phone, even though both are available on almost two-thirds of the phones used by SA's urban cellular users,” World Wide Worx points out.

According to the survey, mobile Web browsing accounted for 3.36 million users at the end of 2009. The user base for mobile application Internet, which includes instant messaging, downloadable applications, and Internet applications, is estimated at about nine million.