Dial-up still dominates as the fixed-line Internet access medium in SA, despite the fact that broadband digital subscriber lines have been available for nearly a decade.

If a new research report from PwC (formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers) is to be believed, SA had 3,1m dial-up users in 2009, compared to 600 000 who accessed the Internet using fixed-line broadband.

The report, SA Entertainment and Media Outlook 2010-2014, predicts that the dial-up market will show a compound annual decline of 9,3%, whereas fixed-line broadband will grow 36,6% in the same period.

However, the number of fixed-line broadband users is only expected to overtake dial-up in 2013.

The dial-up market was still expanding as recently as 2007, and only went into decline in 2009.

This year — 2010 — there’ll still be 2,95m dial-up users against about 850 000 subscribers to asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) services.

But spending on ADSL by consumers already outweighs dial-up, PwC says. According to its report, spending on fixed-line broadband overtook dial-up in 2009 and by 2014 will be eight times higher.

“Dial-up access spending will drop from R3,7bn in 2009 to an expected R1,7bn in 2014, a 14,4% compound annual decrease,” the report says.

Though the number of ADSL users is expected to rise sharply over the next few years, the real growth story is in mobile broadband, according to PwC.

The report predicts that in 2014, 10,1m South Africans will be accessing the Internet using mobile broadband products, against just 3,9m using fixed lines. Between 2010 and 2014, there’ll be a compound annual growth rate in the number of mobile broadband subscribers of 50,7%.

PwC expects mobile Internet access spending to reach R15,2bn in 2014, a 26,5% compound annual increase from 2009. Total Internet access spending will increase at a 20,1% annual rate to R30,5bn in 2014, from R12,2bn last year.

Overall, Vodacom was the principal broadband provider in 2009, accounting for 43% of subscriptions, followed by 29% for Telkom, 16% for MTN and 4% for iBurst, PwC says. “There were also a number of smaller providers that collectively accounted for 8% of the broadband market.” — Duncan McLeod, TechCentral