companies are cracking down on bandwidth use, and since most users surf from work, this is also problematic.

kill the “paying for bandwidth” [easy], fix the overall fee structure [less easy] and fix the societal issues limiting the number of people getting access [much less easy], then you can make progress.

most sensible people i know [who, funnily enough, have almost all lived in places with much cheaper internet] tend to have images and flash animation disabled in an attempt to keep their bandwidth costs down.

other than the sokwanele site, i don’t have pictures turned on at all. [i also use opera, too, so this is much easier than doing it on M$ which is a resource and memory hog].

overall telecoms costs keep most people from the internet, and concerns over bandwidth are keeping a lot of people who are connected from doing or reviewing anything meaningful.

vale? does that work?

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Um - I think you may have fallen off your dead horse somewhere along the way (if only he was covered in glue)- you seem to have missed the point…

The article quite clearly states that we are not talking about the actual reach of internet in the country, but rather the ability to maximise the users that we already have. The author’s first point is to show that we have the SAME number of users as countries like Belgium, but not as much online spend.

I think it may be more of a case of people needing to become more familiar with the internet. The need to go through the stages of internet use before they get to a point where they feel comfortable to engage online - perhaps local marketers feel South Africans aren’t quite there yet?

Perhaps many people are still using the internet for nothing more than information and email? Stats show that as broadband use increases so will the number of interactive users.

I think the idea of more “creative” creative would do wonders to the South African example, especially if more companies began to use alternative sources of media to drive business toward their online portals - modern shoppers love to experience before they buy something…

Its nice to have a genuine ‘tech leader’ talking sense, keep it up…

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the answer to your question lies entirely with the prices of telecommunications in south africa. they are still among the highest in the world, despite the tanking of the rand.

it is not until your final paragraph where you make any concession to prices coming down that, you know, prices might be too high in the first place.

for one thing, the cost of wireless internet is even more expensive than DSL, but since only 15% of south africans have land lines [and only a fraction of those have DSL at home], it’s a really small number of night-time usage.

and furthermore, and i might be tattling on my own usage patterns, on some “community” sites that i attend, i’m often the only black person in cape town after 10pm. 10pm is when the computer labs at the local universities close, as i’ve discovered.

now, while there are several somali-run internet cafes in cape town city center that are open 24 hours a day, the state of mass transit is not so that the masses could use them all the time anyway. and besides, if i’m paying R5 an hour for internet, i won’t want to see many ads anyhow. [there is, by the way, a very strong argument that going to an internet cafe is actually CHEAPER than using a laptop and a wireless modem provided by a cellphone company. this is how expensive it is, as we are forced to pay for bandwidth here.]

also, this is a really poor country. “official” unemployment of 25%, “real” unemployment close to double that, and nearly half the population living below the poverty line as defined by south africa — it’s a real narrow scope of people who are looking at the internet in this place.

fix the structural issues, and perhaps the on-line consumer base will grow somewhat.

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