2009 Africa - Internet, Broadband and Digital Media Statistics (tables only)

Growth in Africa’s Internet and Broadband sector has accelerated in recent years due to improvements in infrastructure, the arrival of wireless access technologies and lower tariffs. Broadband is rapidly replacing dial-up as the preferred access method, and this process is already virtually completed in the continent’s more developed markets.

Most African countries now have commercial DSL services, but their growth is limited by the poor geographical reach of the fixed-line networks. The rapid growth of Internet access has therefore been mostly confined to the capital cities so far. The introduction of mobile data and 3G broadband services is changing this, with the mobile networks bringing Internet access to many areas outside of the main cities for the first time.

Many fixed-line incumbents have reacted by rolling out fixed-wireless access networks. The technology of choice has been CDMA2000 which supports broadband data rates through its EV-DO standard. WiMAX technology, however, offers higher data rates and is quickly gaining ground in Africa with over 100 networks already in operation.

International bandwidth is extremely expensive in Africa because access to international submarine fibre optic cables has been monopolised by national telcos in most countries, while others depend entirely on satellite bandwidth. This is expected to change dramatically with the arrival of several new international cables to the continent’s shores from 2009. To accommodate the growing data traffic, national fibre backbone networks are being rolled out at an increasing pace.

Data in this report is the latest available at the time of preparation and may not be for the current year.

The following notes provide some background to our scenario forecasting methodology:

• This report includes what we term scenario forecasts. By describing long-range scenarios we identify a band within which we expect market growth to occur. The associated text describes what we see as the most likely growth trend within this band.
• The projections shown in the tables in this report are based on our own historical information, as well as on telecommunication sector statistics from official and non-official, national and international sources. We assume a possible deviation of 15-20% around this data.
• All statistics for GDP, revenue, etc are shown in US$, in order to maintain consistency within and between markets. At the same time we acknowledge that this can introduce some irregularities.