Wednesday 17 March saw the release of the 2010 Internet Access Report for South Africa. The annual report is compiled by World Wide Worx in collaboration with Cisco, and I was lucky enough to be ‘the chosen one’ to attend the results presentation and report back to the QuirkStars.
The key finding from the research was that the number of South Africans using the Internet over broadband connections has grown by more than 50% over the past year. Wireless broadband in particular has grown almost three times as fast as fixed line broadband. Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx, presented this interesting information and described 2010 as "The year of take-off". He highlighted the importance of not double-counting. If one had to add all the separate platforms together, there are a total of 9.5 million Internet users. However, there are only 5 306 000 unique users in South Africa.
A few interesting insights also came out of this research:
- SME Internet access has overtaken corporate networks in terms of providing people Internet access.
- More people use a cell phone as primary source of access versus dial-up.
- Major market drivers for the next five years will be cellular and academic growth.
Reshaad Sha, Senior Manager at Cisco, gave an informative presentation into the "Connected Life Market Watch". For the first time, South Africa was included in this report. Key insights from his presentation include:
- Over the next five years video traffic will dominate Internet usage.
- Mobile devices have evolved to a point where they are able to compete with "lightweight desktop computer applications".
- Wireless technologies dominate broadband access in emerging countries due to mobile data cards being the only accessible form of access – how long will this last for?
World Wide Worx, in collaboration with Cisco, put together an insightful and interesting presentation - even for someone who is a newbie to the online working world!
Image Credit: ChrissieCool
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