It’s one of those ideas you hear repeated from all sources: mobile phones are the main way connecting to the internet in Africa. Now there are definite figures to back that claim. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has reported that use of mobile internet surpassed fixed internet in the last quarter of 2009 – and has extended its lead to 300,000 users in Q1 2010.
What’s the story?
According to the ITU, it wasn’t until the end of 2009 that mobile internet actually overtook fixed usage. African net surfers connecting through mobile phones or portable modems increased to 3.8 million at the end of the year, overtaking fixed by 100,000 people. It now reports that this figure has increased to 4.2 million, putting it 300,000 users ahead of the current 3.9 million fixed subscribers.
What does this mean?
Business Daily Africa has reported that this is putting the squeezing on traditional internet service providers in Africa. It suggests that wily moves on the part of the mobile operators is a big part of this trend. They offer pre-paid internet packages to African subscribers – air time top ups are extremely popular in Africa, and by offering internet in the same fashion the networks have picked up a huge number of subscribers. Not only this, but BDA reports that the operators are shareholders in new fibre optic cables that have been laid in to Africa – and as a result they are able to offer faster data rates at more flexible rates to consumers.
What we think?
The dominance of mobile phones in Africa is no accident, and it was not a fair accompli. The mobile operators there have been playing a smart game. They invested heavily in a wide-spread, reliable network infrastructure, and in access and ownership of huge bandwidth. Now that they’ve hooked people on the connections, they’ve begun to offer full laptops with mobile broadband connections at subsidised rates. In Africa, we are seeing the emergence of networks that not only sell you your connection, but also your hardware.
Not sure about these numbers. Please confirm that this article is saying there are only 8.4million(3.9 + 4.2) internet users in Africa. There are 5.3mil users in South Africa alone leaving 3.1mil user in the rest of Africa, somehow I dont think so.
sorry total of 8.1mil users
That trend is normal, in africa, very few households had fixed line, so ADSL has never really been the big thing.
With mobile phones, anyone easily purchase a sim card, and wimax networks seem to also do better here than in Europe and the US.
As Sarge said, 9.1 mil users seems to pessimistic. There are a lot more internet users than that in Africa.