Data revenues of mobile companies:

• MTN in its financial results for year ended December 2021 reported data revenue of R16.4 billion in its SA operations. The group also spend R10 billion in its network infrastructure in its home market.

• Vodacom spent R10.1 billion in its SA infrastructure in the year ended March 2021. The company said that it has 21.1 million data customers on its network, with smart devices up 13.3% to 23.5 million and 4G devices increasing 26.8% to 16.4 million.

• Telkom in its six month ended September 2021 results said it brought R6.3 billion in mobile data revenue.

The group also invested R3.6 billion in its network.

• Cell C in its interim results for the 6-month period to June 2021 said it would need to spend more than R5-billion in capital expenditure annually to build a comparable network.

According to Broadband Wherever, 50GB is roughly enough data for any one of the following:

• 2500 hours of browsing;

• 10 000 music tracks;

• 600 hours streaming music;

• 300 hours of Skype;

• 400 app downloads;

• 50 SD movie downloads; and

• 20000 e-mails.

South Africa’s economy advanced by 1.2% quarter on quarter in the three months to December 2021, below market expectations of a 1.3% increase. Considering the full year of 2021, gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 4.9%, the most in 14 years, recovering from a 6.4% decline in 2020.

The mining industry registered the largest growth at 11.8% due to the boom in commodity prices. First runner-up was agriculture, with growth of 8.3% while manufacturing was in third place with 6.5%.

However, the largest contributor to overall GDP for the year came from the finance sector, which grew 3.7% but contributed 0.9% to the annual GDP number.