Internet in South Africa

“2009 has been an amazing year for the online landscape in South Africa, according to Nielsen’s we have seen the total audience touch 6.9 million unique users. This is tremendous growth on the four million we saw just 18 months ago. Despite the recessionary environment we have still seen over 25 per cent growth in revenues, but most importantly in tandem with many other developments including the landing of Seacom and the 2010 World Cup, we expect next year to be the biggest year for digital in our online history. I expect to look back at 2009 as they year it all came to together, and 2010 the year the digital light switch truly went to on!,” says Adrian Hewlett, chairman, Online Publishers Association.

Internet South Africa

For online demographics, we’ll use the Online Publishers Association figures (using Nielsen), which provide a pretty good indicator of what’s going on.

Latest online readership: August 2009

Unique Browsers: Total:11,749,021
SA Only: 7,371,669

Page Impressions: Total: 410,036,545
SA Only: 326,159,208

Previous Months »

Profile of SA’s Internet Users: August 2009

Change in domestic consumer behaviour levels across 2008

Source: Nielsen Online, ZA Market Intelligence

History:

Great expectations stall on the Internet in South Africa
SA online ad industry blooming
Dreaming of an e-Christmas

8 December 2007:- Online retailers will have generated around R200-million by the time stores close for Christmas this year. And the most popular item on sale on the Internet? Satellite navigation systems for cars.

Research conducted separately by leading independent technology market researchers World Wide Worx and the shopping search site Jump Shopping confirms that this will be South Africa’s first “e-Christmas”, when people go shopping online for festive season gifts on a large scale.

“We expect the holiday season to contribute to at least 20% of the total R929-million expected to be spent online in 2007, with the proportion possible rising to as much as 25%” says World Wide Worx managing director Arthur Goldstuck.


World Wide Worx’s study of Internet shopping, “Online Retail in South Africa 2007″, confirms that consumers are beginning to gain confidence in online gift shopping.

“While it is clear that books, DVDs, CDs and electronics like iPods and satellite navigation devices are hot online this month, it depends on the quality of online retail sites which stores and items benefit the most.”

That’s where the search engines play a role. Major search sites like Google and Ananzi will be the starting point for many shoppers, who will then often find themselves on specialised shopping search sites like Jump Shopping.

Source World Wide Worx


1 December 2005: - Despite great expectations, growth in Internet access among the South African public has slowed to a crawl, with the dial-up market experiencing no growth in subscribers for the first time since the industry was launched in 1993.

Solid growth in corporate usage and dramatic uptake of broadband has, however, helped to push the number of South Africans with Internet access up by 5%.

This is the key finding of the latest edition of World Wide Worx’s annual study of the South African Internet access industry. According to “The Goldstuck Report: Internet Access in South Africa 2005”, 3,6-million South Africans will have access to the Internet at the end of 2005. This means growth in 2005 ticked up slightly from 4% in 2004 to 5% in 2005, giving 1 in every 12 South Africans access to the Internet, marginally up from 1 in 13 at the end of 2003. “While the arrival of broadband or high-speed Internet access has transformed the Internet access landscape in terms of technology choice, its impact has been felt far more strongly in existing users migrating from dial-up usage than in new users coming online,” says Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx.

Developments that were expected to boost growth in 2004 and 2005, such as the roll-out of competitive access services to businesses by the Second Network Operator (SNO), failed to materialise, and there is still no clarity on when or how the SNO will begin to serve the local Internet market. As stated in by World Wide Worx previously, accelerated growth in Internet usage is heavily dependent on the timely and effective roll-out of the SNO.

Among the most significant findings were:

The dial-up market has stalled since it passed the one-million mark for the first time in 2002, with rapid growth in Telkom Internet’s service making up for tremendous churn in the customer bases of other dial-up ISPs;

As broadband access comes down in price and improves in performance, it will reduce the size of the dial-up market, unless more concrete efforts are made to reach disadvantaged communities;

The leased line market for corporate access remains healthy, bolstered by growth in Virtual Private Networks and corporate-grade Voice over IP. However, while the number of lines continues to grow to support volume of demand from existing users, it is not matched by equivalent growth in new users with access to such lines.

Schools connectivity has been a damp squib after much was promised by provincial authorities, with delivery delayed by up to three years;

Most Internet Service Providers are evolving into providers of specialised data and telecommunications services, no longer depending on dial-up subscribers or pure Internet connectivity for their revenue.

“The good news is that impatience with the slow pace of Internet growth and the high cost of connectivity has permeated the upper echelons of government,” says Goldstuck. “As a result, another significant shift in telecommunications policy, equivalent to the deregulation of voice calls over the Internet, could occur in the next two years.”

Source: Wide World Worx

ISOC-ZA TRYING TO LOWER BROADBAND COSTS


August 25, 2004 - Johannesburg - The Internet Society of SA (ISOC-ZA) has aligned itself with the Online Publishers' Association's (OPA) call for an urgent meeting with government to discuss the high cost of bandwidth in the country. ISOC-ZA also believes that reducing the cost of bandwidth is imperative in order to stimulate the growth of Internet usage.

In a statement, the organisation claims that government should become actively involved in making this a reality, as the true cost of bandwidth is clear from the dramatic slow-down in growth of Internet users in SA.

In its statement, ISOC-ZA quotes a report by World Wide Worx, an independent research company, which shows that growth slowed down to 6% in 2003.

For 2004, World Wide Worx forecasts an increase from 3.28 million Internet users at the end of 2003 to around 3.52 million users.

This means that at the current rate of growth, there will only be one in ten people in SA that will have Internet access by 2009.

ISOC-ZA says that even the introduction of broadband Internet access by both Telkom and Sentech has failed to reduce prices, with broadband remaining excessively high priced and out of the reach of average citizens.

Pointing out that the cheapest broadband access from Telkom costs approximately R1.75/Kbps while Sentech's MyWireless is R2.93/Kbps, the organisation claims that this is 286% and 480% more expensive than a comparable offering from an Egyptian ISP.

"It is the view of ISOC-ZA that broadband can have a significant impact on growing the number of Internet users in the country and it can certainly help to bridge the digital divide," says the statement.

"Therefore we support the OPA's criticism of the bandwidth situation and join them in calling for an indaba with government, the regulator, the Internet Service Providers Association and other related parties to find ways of reducing bandwidth and broadband costs in SA."

Source: allAfrica.com

Internet

African Internet usage has trebled to over 12 million since 2000, but South Africa remains the continent's dominant Internet centre, with a quarter of Africa's users. And Johannesburg-based companies are central to the Internet industry. Nine of the 12 major Internet Service Providers listed by the Internet Service Providers Association http://www.ispa.org.za are based in Johannesburg. The Johannesburg Internet Exchange (JINX) is the larger of two national hubs that connect the Internet Service Providers into a single network. Most Johannesburg hotels are online, and all but the smallest businesses have access, usually via a fixed line. A number of Internet cafes are available, particularly in areas where tourists congregate.
Although there are no definitive figures for the number of Internet users in South Africa, the generally accepted figure is around 3,1 million people. The majority of the country's Internet users are concentrated in the larger cities, Johannesburg in particular.

Technology options on the local market include wireless, which is relatively new, and broadband, ADSL and ISDN, which are better established. Most new technology is rolled out first in the major centres like Johannesburg and Cape Town, before being offered in the rest of the country. Johannesburg International Airport, for example, offers wireless Internet access to anyone seated in the airport's retail and dining section.

 

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