Concerns have been raised around global giants like Facebook and Google capitalising on the unconnected in Africa to "lock them up in a corporate digital prison" through zero-rated offerings. However, local analysts say SA - and Africa at large - should take what it can get.
This comes after a number of past and ongoing initiatives - including Facebook's Internet.org, WhatsApp's collaboration with Cell C to offer free messaging, Google's Free Zone, and Orange's free Wikipedia initiative - that ostensibly aim to introduce the Internet to those who do not yet have access.
Facebook says Internet.org was introduced "to connect the two-thirds of the world that doesn't have Internet access". The service has been introduced in Tanzania, Ghana and Kenya, with other African countries also on the radar. Although the company has yet to confirm plans to go live in SA, analysts believe this is inevitable, given the country's low Internet penetration rate.
A Reuters article yesterday positions Google and Facebook as being "at the forefront of a scramble to win over new African Internet users", and adds critics believe this to be more of a plan to lock in customers on a continent of a billion people than a case of reaching out to the poor.
Caging customers?
The publication cites Africa Internet specialist Mike Jensen's view on global giants bringing the poor online: "It's like a drug pusher giving you a small amount and saying: 'If you want more, you have to come and buy it'."
But it does not make sense for Africa to reject zero-rated services as it awaits something local to come along, says BMI-TechKnowledge analyst Brian Neilson, who notes SA's development organisations lack the scale the giants have. "Even the recent example of research labs being set up in Joburg and Kenya belong to another global giant: IBM. Accenture and Amazon also have research and/or development facilities in SA. But they are the global giants, not local start-ups."
ICT expert Adrian Schofield says Africa cannot have its cake and eat it. "On the one hand, the continent is repeatedly stated to be the part of the globe with the most growth potential, and on the other hand, some people are complaining when big companies come to take advantage of that growth."
Schofield says innovation comes from experiencing some activity and then thinking about how to improve or adapt it. "So, have the experience first. Africans have been innovating the use of mobile technology since it first appeared on the continent. As they experience more of what the Internet has to offer, so they will come up with ideas on how to improve it for themselves."
OTT reality
The reality, says Neilson, is that the giant, global over-the-top (OTT) players are eating everyone else's lunch, and are an existential threat to local-based players, even the bigger ones in the bigger developing economies like SA.
"While this is a huge concern, it would be very difficult - if not impossible - to regulate against, at least in the telecoms regulatory space." SA's operators are slowly coming to accept the OTT part of business as inevitable, with some embracing partnerships.
IDC telecoms analyst George Kalebaila says it boils down to the basic issue of market development, "and of course there is the social side to this too".
"This is a conversation I have had with Facebook. It is a case of market development for them and they are not hiding it. It is just how it works. [These companies] want to expose people to the Internet and they know that, once they have given this to them and they have improved their economic conditions, they will use other services."
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