The government wants to connect millions more homes to the internet via WiFi hotspots, but its celebrations are misleading.
The Minister of Communication has outlined that government is looking to connect 5.5 million more South African households to the internet in the next three to four years.
According to that data, 64.8 percent of South African households did not have internet access in 2011, which means that 35.2 percent of households were able to use the internet, not 21.1 percent as the minister says. In fact, it is thanks in part to these companies that South Africans can still use the internet even during loadshedding. Last year MTNthat it had invested R5 billion to improve its network resiliency in the face of government-issued loadshedding, ensuring that its cellular towers were still able to transmit during blackouts and users could still go online.