Cellphones’ full potential needs state support
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File photo: MJTR, Flickr.com File photo: MJTR, Flickr.com
Cape Town - Eighty percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s 800 million people should have access to cellphones by the end of the decade, double the current rate, although government help was needed to reach far-flung areas, industry body group GSMA said yesterday.
The growth of mobile data – an even more powerful economic tool than simple voice services – also hinged on authorities allocating sufficient spectrum, said Mortimer Hope, the Africa director of GSMA.
“We expect data to keep growing dramatically, and to facilitate that you need more spectrum to handle that data growth,” he said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Africa in Cape Town.
To unleash the full potential of mobile internet services, he said, governments should also consider cutting taxes on web-enabled handsets to make them more affordable to consumers.
At the moment about 15 percent of Africans have access to the internet via their cellphones.
“It’s very early days for data but we would like it be everywhere you have voice. The extra physical infrastructure deployment is not as big as you would think,” Hope said.
Cellphones have been one of the factors behind Africa’s recent growth spurt, by freeing people from the shackles of the continent’s awful landline infrastructure and allowing them to communicate and transact at minimal cost.
The simple SMS – and more recently mobile social media – have also become powerful political tools, used by grassroots political movements to mobilise support against oppressive states, such as happened in the north African “Arab Spring”.
Governments across Africa were aware of the economic potential of mobile telephony but were sometimes slow to implement the legal frameworks that companies required to expand, Hope said.
“Many governments across Africa have developed broadband plans. The issue is that those plans very often just sit on a shelf, not being implemented,” he said.
Africa’s biggest cellphone company is MTN. Other major operators are Vodacom and France’s Orange.
Reuters