By Greg de Chasteauneuf – Since its arrival in South Africa in 1995, the internet has brought about significant economic and social change. From cost and speed to accessibility and usage, it has fundamentally transformed the country and has empowered millions of people with new ways of working, being entertained, and living a connected lifestyle – something that has become of utmost importance during this time of the pandemic.
Originally, the options were extremely limited around how people could connect. Telkom Diginet was expensive but reliable; dial-up was cheap but slow and not always on; while faster, ISDN was expensive, not always on, and limited to a maximum speed of 128k; and satellite was very expensive with users having to contend with high latency.
A pricey affair
Most organisations opted for a 64kbps dedicated Diginet link from Telkom, one of the most affordable options at the time. It typically cost R4 000 per month or a staggering R16 000 in today’s money. Essentially, this meant a corporate user paid approximately R62.50 (R257 today) for every kbps used.
To put this into context, R16 000 now will get a business a symmetrical, dedicated 1Gbps link. This means that at a price of 17 cents per kbps today, the price of fixed line connectivity has decreased by 99,728% in 25-odd years. If it were technically possible to do a 1Gbps line back in 1995, that would set a company back around R62-million (R257-million today).
Sadly, home users were significantly worse off. A 56kbps dial-up connection was the best on offer. But this was asymmetrical, and latency was high. Today, a 100Mbps fibre connection is almost 20 000 times faster, has low latency, is always on, and is generally symmetrical.
Taking things for granted
The new generation of internet users have no idea how lucky they are when it comes to their connectivity. It is all about being always on, having access to WiFi, and not even giving the cost of mobile data too much consideration.
The internet has become a user-friendly affair with no annoying dial-up numbers to phone. And woe betide the parent who picked up the phone to dial out during a browsing session. Today, it is a case of either being always on via fixed line, high speed, affordable fibre, or having your friendly neighbourhood WiFi network’s login details saved on your device. From a mobile network perspective, internet coverage and availability are virtually ubiquitous in South Africa – a notion that was unheard of a decade or so ago.
Of course, this does not mean the internet is perfect. It is continuously evolving and becoming faster to provide even better services. But imagine if the pandemic struck in 1995. With no affordable way of accessing anything online, the lockdown experience would certainly have been a significantly different one.
Greg de Chasteauneuf is the chief technology officer of Saicom