Employment within the ICT sector showing growth
The information and communications technology (ICT) sector remains one of the biggest employers and contributors to South Africa’s mainstream economy, the ‘State of ICT 2019’ report shows.
The fourth iteration of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa’s (Icasa’s) review of the telecommunications, broadcasting and postal services sectors, released on Friday, shows total overall employment numbers had increased by 18.8% from 51 993 in 2017 to 61 757 in 2018.
Employment within the telecommunications sector increased by 20% to 37 063, while the postal sector employment registered an increase of 21.9% to 19 881 and broadcasting sector employment increased marginally by 0.3% to 4 813.
Over a four-year period, the total sector employment increased by 1.9%, with employment in the telecommunications sector having increased by 6.2% and broadcasting marginally lifting 0.2%, while the postal service employment rates recorded a decline of 4.3% from 22 671 in 2015.
Meanwhile, the revenue reported for the three sectors showed an aggregate growth of 12.2% from R204-billion in 2017 to R229-billion in 2018.
Telecommunication services revenue increased by 14.4% from R163.9-billion in 2017 to R187.5-billion in 2018, broadcasting services revenue edged up 3.7% year-on-year from R35.6-billion to R36.9-billion and postal services revenue declined by 0.1% to R4.7-billion in 2018.
Over a four-year period, the combined revenue for the three sectors increased by 6.5%, supported by a 6.4% increase in telecommunication services revenue and an 8.8% increase in broadcasting revenue. The postal services revenue continued to show a declining trend, decreasing by 3.4% over the four-year period.
However, despite this continued “dynamic growth”, the achievements fall short of Icasa’s vision of affordable access to the range of communication services.
“Though access to mobile services continues to grow, broadband access, both fixed and mobile, remains at unsatisfactory levels owing to [the] perceived high cost of communication services, in particular, data services,” the authority said.
“In that regard, Icasa has embarked on several interventions aimed at addressing this challenge - these are the mobile services market review process and the regulation of data expiry and transfer rules.”
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