South Africa's Digital Divide: The Real Heroes Aren't Who You Think

• The South African government's broadband access fund has empowered smaller service providers to roll out connectivity to thousands of homes and hotspots in underserved areas.
• Many established wireless internet service providers Wisps and ISPs have been extending their reach into these communities for years, using both wireless and fibre technologies. Notably, government aims to connect over a million households within six months, offering data packages starting as low as R5/day for uncapped access.
• Vodacom and MTN's smallest daily prepaid offering costs R5.50, where you may "eat as much as you like" of a whopping 35MB bundle. Is this not really the true definition of what the digital divide really is?
• Fibertime has been making strides in townships, connecting more than 70 000 homes across 13 townships in four provinces. With hundreds of thousands more sites under construction, they're planning to scale up to an additional million homes.
• Ilitha, backed by investment from Meridian, is rolling out wireless and fibre services in underserved communities. Its ambitious goal is to connect 500 000 homes, bolstered by the very type of foreign investment Vodacom claimed was jeopardised by its failed merger.
• Having acquired 11 000km of fibre from ATC, Frogfoot Networks is expanding into smaller towns, offering cost-effective services to lower-income groups. This expansion also provides valuable fibre backhaul to small Wisps and entrepreneurs, allowing them to connect neighbouring townships with fibre and wireless services.

Additionally, companies like Too Much WiFi, Wire-Wire, Ikija, Net99, AdNotes, ThinkWiFi and Project Isizwe are just a few of the many actively rolling out services in these underserved areas and townships.

Considering all these initiatives, it's clear that Vodacom's claims of being the sole saviour for these areas are, at best, exaggerated. Moreover, the alleged damage to foreign investment appears to be a phantom menace.

Communications minister Solly Malatsi is championing digital inclusion from a pricing standpoint, advocating for more affordable cellphones and devices to help more people benefit from the digital economy, thereby narrowing the connectivity gap between rich and poor.

Plans are under way to remove ad valorem taxes on smartphones. As the minister aptly put it, smartphones are no longer luxury items theyve become necessities for participating in the digital economy.

Of course, this will require the major mobile operators to adjust their prepaid pricing structures to accommodate the influx of new users. But will this really happen? Fat chance! It's more plausible that smaller service providers will step up to bridge the gap between demand and reality.