Earlier today, Internet researcher and commentator, Arthur Goldstuck, presented the findings of World Wide Worx’s much anticipated “Internet Access in South Africa 2008″ study during the keynote of the Networkers at Cisco Live! conference which finished today at the Sandton Convention Centre.

Amongst the highlights were the fact that the Internet user base in South Africa has seen its highest rate of growth since 2001, increasing by 12.5% to 4,5-million in 2008.

I strongly suggest requesting a copy of the full report from World Wide Worx, but a summary of the trends and key findings are as follows:

Trend 1: There has been a 16% increase in Internet service providers
Trend 2: Hundreds of rogue and unlicensed networks are in existence
Trend 3: ADSL dominance is ending as a result of wireless broadband
Trend 4: Wireless broadband has entered the mainstream
Trend 5: Broadband culture has taken hold in SA
Trend 6: Dial-up at the end of its lifespan
Trend 7: ADSL has grown through SME installations
Trend 8: Cellphone Internet usage contributed to the Internet base
Trend 9: 12.5% jump in Internet users
Trend 10: Internet Adoption curve recovers
Trend 11: Strong growth predicted over next 5 years
Trend 12: Repeat adoption patterns
Trend 13: Experience curve flattens
Trend 14: But the experience curve will kick in again
Trend 15: Inflection point in 2013
Trend 16: More Bandwidth and increased caps!

Overall, the findings confirm what many, including myself, believe paint a bright future for South Africa’s maturing Internet population with the gap slowly closing between us and the developed world. Once SEACOM (the new fibre optic cable that will connect the East Coast of Africa to Southern Africa, Europe and Asia) goes into operation in mid-2009, the wholesale price of bandwidth is expected to come down drastically while connection speeds will far exceed anything experienced in the past.

Thanks to factors such as SEACOM and Fifa 2010, Goldstuck predicts that SA’s Internet Population will grow by 13.3% in 2009 & a whopping 17.6% in 2010!!!

It wasn’t all good news however, and Goldstuck did issue some caveats about the growing inequality gap that is emerging between South Africa’s haves and have-nots. For example, even under these new favourable conditions, it could take as long as 10 years before the previously disadvantaged are properly integrated due to the 5 year Internet experience curve. The fact remains that all the bandwidth in the world is pointless unless basic social and environmental factors are addressed such as literacy and access to reliable power.

Goldstuck also says that next year’s national elections are a key milestone and will largely determine whether the government is able to deliver on its social promises or not and whoever takes over as the next Minister of Communications will play an equally vital role in shaping the future.

Read Paul Jacobson’s post for more on this topic.

Follow the Networkers at Cisco Live! conference on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook or check out their very funky social media press release.

UPDATE: An edited version of Goldstuck’s presentation was uploaded on YouTube (watch below):

The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) recently made a grandiose announcement regarding the relaunch of their SABC News portal, which many industry commentators have called out over the years for being a wasted opportunity since the SABC has access to vast amounts of staff, local news and multimedia content – our very own CNN BBC.

Rather unsurprisingly, the angle of the great relaunch revolves around social media and Web 2.0, as stated in the Biz Community press release:

According to Sandison, the Web 2.0 features of the new site are expected to be its trump card. “Users will be able to customise a news homepage that reflects their interests, download or subscribe to our Podcasts and upload their own footage to the ‘Caught on Camera’ section.

Not entirely novel, but full marks for attempting to get with the times. Sadly, the site is really let down by the actual execution of this strategy which gives the impression that all these so-called ‘bells and whistles’ were a complete afterthought rather than a deliberate attempt at engaging visitors and branching out to a more savvy audience.

For example, multimedia content is relegated to an unattractive module below the page fold and, besides the pictures of the day, simply displays the latest audio and video bulletins in bullet point format. My biggest gripe however, is the fact that they chose to use RealNetworks (they still going? there’s hope for Netscape yet!) as their only encoding format instead of something with more market share such as Flash or Windows Media. I don’t have RealPlayer or its associated browser plug-ins installed and, like most other people, couldn’t be bothered to go to all this effort for the one website I’ve come across lately that insists on using it.

Yet another pearler from the press release:

This [Web 2.0 features] will be enhanced in the second phase of the site development, when users can visit the mobi portal to receive news headlines and traffic and weather reports on their mobile phones.

Any publisher that is serious about building a digital brand and making revenue in Africa should know that mobile is an essential channel with far greater reach than the desktop web and should never be considered a “phase 2″. One could pose the question to SABC – why didn’t they launch a proper news mobi portal first before redesigning their website?

There’s no doubt that the new site features vast improvements over the old one and might in fact see some growth in traffic, but the cluttered design and the fact that there was No Breaking News (sic) when I checked in this morning leads me to believe that they still have a very long way to go if they are serious about becoming a competitor in this ultra competitive market.

I’m in New York at the moment working on a very special project and couldn’t resist sharing this pic of myself and Jeffrey Zeldman—Web design guru and co-founder of A List Apart—which was taken in his Manhattan office.

Some might say that there is a slight height difference and an uncanny resemblance to a scene out of the Lord of the Rings but I’ll let you be the judge: