JOHANNESBURG is the telecomms hub of South Africa, which ranks 23rd in telecommunications development in the world. The city hosts the headquarters of numerous local and international operations, and serves as the base for multi-nationals operating in the rest of the continent.

South Africa has approximately 4.92-million installed telephones and 4.3-million installed exchange lines. This represents 39% of the total lines installed in Africa. Some 58% of Johannesburg's households had a fixed line telephone in the home in 2001, an 11% increase over five years. In 2003 the industry was reportedly worth about R81-billion. And 85 percent of the sector's activities occur in Gauteng.

South Africa's sprawling geography has required it to invest in a large transmission infrastructure that covers about 156-million circuit-kilometres. The transmission network is almost wholly digital. Digital microwave and optical fibre serve as the main transmission media for the inter-primary network, interconnecting all major centers, including Johannesburg.

GSM cellphones
The country is the fourth fastest growing GSM (Global Systems for Mobile Communications) market in the world and is growing at a rate of 50% per annum. There are more cellphones, or mobile phones, than there are landlines in South Africa. In May 2004 the country had 18,2 million cellphone users.

The market is dominated by Vodacom (which has 10 million users) and MTN (which claims 5,22 million). In 2001 a third licence was awarded to Cell C, which had about three million subscribers in May 2004.

"Prepaid" customers - those who pay for their airtime in advance - make up more than 90 percent of all new business. Most of the more than 9 000 people who sign up every day pick this option.

South Africans are also a nation of SMS senders. Vodacom transmitted two billion SMSs between March 2003 and March 2004, which was up 33,3 percent from 2003.

Cellphone usage has reached areas where no fixed line service has been available. Vodacom reports that 35 million calls are made each month from its network of over two thousand phone shops installed in poorer areas.

Internet
African Internet usage has trebled to over 12 million since 2000, but South Africa remains the continent's dominant Internet centre, with a quarter of Africa's users. And Johannesburg-based companies are central to the Internet industry. Nine of the 12 major Internet Service Providers listed by the Internet Service Providers Association are based in Johannesburg. The Johannesburg Internet Exchange (JINX) is the larger of two national hubs that connect the Internet Service Providers into a single network. Most Johannesburg hotels are online, and all but the smallest businesses have access, usually via a fixed line. A number of Internet cafes are available, particularly in areas where tourists congregate.

Although there are no definitive figures for the number of Internet users in South Africa, the generally accepted figure is around 3,1 million people. The majority of the country's Internet users are concentrated in the larger cities, Johannesburg in particular.

Technology options on the local market include wireless, which is relatively new, and broadband, ADSL and ISDN, which are better established. Most new technology is rolled out first in the major centres like Johannesburg and Cape Town, before being offered in the rest of the country. Johannesburg International Airport, for example, offers wireless Internet access to anyone seated in the airport's retail and dining section.

Connectivity is likely to grow in the next few years, because of increased competition from the second network operator and from Sentech, the national signal distributor for broadcast, which now also offers wireless broadband access.