Bring on cheap mobile internet

JOURNALISTS are not big fans of being scooped by their contemporaries.

Especially when both of us spoke to the same person within minutes of each other - but the other journalist managed to walk away with a scoop.

One of my fellow newsman - who will remain nameless - had a conversation with Romeo Kumalo, the group executive for strategy and development at Vodacom, in which it was disclosed that Vodacom's management would be meeting to discuss a cut in data prices.

This move would certainly spark a price war with rival MTN and have repercussions throughout the industry.

South Africans have eagerly awaited major reductions in the price of broadband. The arrival of the Seacom cable in June or July this year should go a long way to addressing this, as it brings more bandwidth for internet connectivity than South Africa could have dreamed of a few years ago.

But if Vodacom makes substantial reductions in the next few weeks, then the great - and hopefully big - bandwidth price snowball will start rolling down the Mzansi hill as soon as March, perhaps.

Mobile connectivity in South Africa is already amongst the cheapest in the world, with bandwidth available from as low as 19c a megabyte on some packages from cellular providers.

This is due to the dismal state of terrestrial internet connectivity in the country that has provided the mobile providers with a golden opportunity to capture a large section of the market with prices that compete with that of terrestrial - unheard of in the rest of the world.

Socioeconomic realities in South Africa also favour mobile connectivity. Kumalo says that most South Africans will experience the internet for the first time on their mobile phones. And it is a well-known fact that the penetration rate of cellular phones locally is amongst the highest in the world.

It feels like yesterday that mobile internet connectivity was introduced to South Africans at a whopping R50 a megabyte, at GPRS speeds that made a turtle wading through peanut butter seem rapid.

In just a few years, that price dwindled down to R2 a year outside of plans, and significantly less on them.

Data tariffs when roaming internationally are still ludicrously high, however, as I learned on recent trip to France.

Half an hour of checking email and browsing the web on my Vodacom HSDPA connection set me back the princely sum of R213 at greedily negotiated international rates of R175 per megabyte. For frequent fliers, the status quo in terms of mobile connectivity remains dire.

But within our borders, the outlook is rosy and the likes of Vodacom and MTN have their sites set firmly on the lower end of the market.

"I think of a painter in Soweto running his business from his phone," said Kumalo. "Vodacom offers free email to all of its customers and our aim is to democratise the internet in South Africa, increasing the penetration of mobile access."

The market has changed. Everyone in South Africa has a mobile phone and the next step is to get us all using the internet on them. Cheaply.

- Fin24.com