JOHANNESBURG, South Africa—The overall mobile industry in South Africa is expected to grow to 46 million rand (US$4.1 million) by 2005, with Vodacom continuing to be the largest player by far and Cell C set to achieve approximately 5 billion rand (US$441.4 million) in revenues by 2005, according to the latest BMI-TechKnowledge Telecommunication Services Overview report. The overview notes the number of mobile subscribers stood at 8.6 million at the end of March 2001, making the South African mobile communications market the largest in Africa.
Werner Muller, BMI-TechKnowledge Telecoms Division manager and co-author of the report, expects the industry will become a primarily voice-driven market, with data growing stronger from a small base.
Muller notes that because there is no immediate urgency for third-generation (3G) services in South Africa, it is not expected to be introduced within the forecast period. “We expect all operators to focus their attention on GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) over the forecast period, and only after GPRS has taken firm ground should 3G kick off. It would be impractical for the operators to sink huge investments in 3G without even educating the market properly about mobile-data capabilities,” Muller said.
The launch of GPRS should see some impact on mobile service revenues. However, the group currently foresees that only 12 percent of all revenues will constitute mobile data by the end of 2005.
It can be said with some certainty that mobile-data penetration into the rest of Africa will take place only after it has been launched in South Africa. Comments from the network operators suggest that the focus of mobile data services will be primarily in South Africa.
Research indicates that to date, only MTN has made a solid commitment to the introduction of GPRS. MTN, which already has High Speed Circuit Switched Data (HSCSD) services, plan to introduce GPRS by mid-2002.
