Telecommunication in South Africa

Compared to the European Union, South Africa has a slight downturn in the development of telecommunications. Under the country code +27, there were a total of 99.00 million connections in 2019. Among them were 96.97 million million mobile phones, which corresponds to an average of 1.7 per person. In the EU, this figure is 1.2 mobile phones per person.

In the expansion of broadband Internet connections, South Africa is back. Around 56% of all residents have access to the Internet. Approximately 2% have their own fast Internet connection, which is at least faster than the previous ISDN (more than 2048 kbit/s).

With about 4.76 million webhosts, South Africa is below the world's average by population.

Back to overview: South Africa

Development of telephone and internet connections

The following diagrams show the development of the different telephone and Internet connections as a percentage of the country's population. Values above 100% mean that on average every inhabitant has more than one subscription.

Spread of internet connections in South Africa 1990 - 2017

Broadband internet in South Africa 2002 - 2019

Landlines in the years 1990 - 2019

Mobile phones in South Africa 1990 - 2019

Spreading in 2019	South Africa Total	South Africa percent	EU Total	EU percent
Broadband users	1.25 m	2.14 %	157.90 m	35.28 %
Landlines	2.02 m	3.46 %	166.16 m	37.13 %
Mobile cellulars	96.97 m	165.60 %	547.36 m	122.31 %