Report shows scale of SA’s mobile phone revolution
Institute of Race Relations finds that between 2000 and 2014 mobile phone subscriptions had increased seven-fold
A new report by the South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR) reveals the scale of SA’s mobile phone revolution. IRR’s head of risk, Kerwin Lebone‚ noted that between 2000 and 2014‚ mobile phone subscriptions for every 100 people had leapt by 702%‚ while those for fixed-line telephones had dropped by 38%. At the same time‚ the proportion of people who accessed the internet increased from 5.4% to 49%. He added: "In 2000‚ the ratio of mobile phones to fixed-line telephone subscriptions was 1.7:1. By 2014‚ that had shot up to 22 mobile phone subscriptions per fixed line. "Of 26.2-million people aged 16 or older with access to the internet‚ almost half report doing so via their mobile phones‚ with Samsung and Microsoft dominating the handset market." The IRR report also shows that the dominance of the mobile phone extends to voice traffic. Lebone said: "There were 12.5-billion minutes of fixed-line voice traffic in 2014-15 compared to 82.9-billion minutes of mobile voice traffic. ...
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