Huge Implications
I'm not too sure that everybody realizes that the implications of the changes we've been seeing in South African Internet during the last two weeks or so are a lot bigger, and much more far-reaching, than they seem to be on the surface.
Those that do realize it, are either extremely excited (as they should be), or feel very threatened right now. Let me try to explain what I mean, and why I'm saying this. I may digress a few times, but bear with me.
The two changes I'm going to address are obvious. Realistically affordable, uncapped broadband access, and the FNB/PayPal deal.
Up to this stage, bandwidth has been a precious commodity that had to be measured like a Weigh-Less member measures their food. While this wasn't a good thing for your average consumer, what it meant was that an isolated web that only stretched as far as the borders of South Africa slowly, but surely, emerged. A few people saw this, and jumped on the opportunity. So today we have a few localized clones of global web services, that have either been wildly successful, or a complete flop. This, in turn, has led to a closely-knit community of South African tech specialists. Depending on who you ask, this can be seen as either a good thing or a bad thing (but I won't voice my opinion on that here).
The lack of an easy way for small business to receive money online (if you've tried, you'd know about the whole merchant account gauntlet that had to be run) only aggravated this isolated South African web. To put it simply, it took a lot of money to get an SA based website that receives money up and running, and then the rules and regulations made it so difficult to receive money from outside of South Africa that no one really bothered.
The long and the short of it is, that up to now, unless your web-based business was so successful that you could pack it in and move abroad, you were pretty much restricted to operating within South African borders.
Now, in my humble opinion, this isn't a good thing. The internet is a global network, but we've been forced into using it as if it's a local network.
Now here's the kicker: I foresee that this is going to change, rapidly, starting right now.
Uncapped broadband means we can start using the internet as it was always intended to be used. Paradigms will shift, mindsets will change. If there's no difference to the consumer, why would they use a local, smaller, alternative over a huge, established service (let me just mention that many of the successful local services are catering for the long tail - and those that do, are doing things right, and will probably keep on being successful). Why would people that build these services now cater for a local-only audience, when suddenly it makes no difference where in the world they're hosted. Now that anyone (with an FNB account, but I'll get to that) can receive money from anywhere, why would they target a smaller audience, if they can target the whole world? Do you see where I'm going with this? Finally, the end of our isolation is in sight. South Africa is now as connected to the rest of the world as it's never been before.
If you're aren't excited, you should be. Whether you're a consumer or a producer of internet-based services, things are going to be different from now on. If you're feeling threatened, rightly so. It's adapt or die time. if you're part of the closely-knit community, now is the time to shift your focus and realize that South Africa can start making an impact on the web, internationally! Now is the time for all our talent to start shining.
Now, there will be naysayers out there. Those that say that uncapped broadband is still too expensive. Well, it's a damn sight cheaper than it was a few weeks ago, and with all the planned cables landing over the next few years, it will only get cheaper. People whining about FNB's implementation of PayPal...here, have some cheese. It doesn't matter that you have to do things from the FNB side, or that they take 1.5% your precious money. The fact of the matter is that they've overcome some major hurdles, so who the hell cares if there are one or two small niggles? You can receive money from anywhere in the world, and within seconds, have it in your South African bank account. Could you do that before yesterday? Thought not.
Yes, there are still a few problems that need to be overcome, but the changes we've seen in the last few weeks bode well for what lies in the future.
I, for one, welcome these changes, and the ripple it has set off, and I look forward to seeing what happens in the next few years.
