Article Written by Kgati Mogashoa 02 April 2023.

Since the initial email was sent and the first IP addresses were created, the internet in South Africa has advanced significantly. The internet has significantly increased in speed and accessibility in South Africa. By 2019, approximately 70% of South Africans were online, according to World Bank data. Almost 41 million South Africans regularly use the internet on a regular basis as of January 2022. Where did the internet begin and where is it going in South Africa? We discuss the major turning points that altered South Africa's internet and show how it has developed into a priceless resource for homes and companies. Let's examine the history of South Africa's internet development.

Rhodes University received the first South African IP address in the late 1980s. A connection was built in November 1991 between a residence in Portland, Oregon, and the university's computing center (USA). Universities in South Africa launched a UNINET at about that time, connecting them to the internet. This was the first national network that utilized digital infrastructure to connect various sites. Upload and download rates greatly accelerated once Rhodes University's first email link was created. Internet speeds increased from a snail's pace of approximately 75 bytes per second to that of a tenacious tortoise (about 9600 bytes per second). Internet speeds nowadays are equal to those of a fast rocket ship traveling at almost the speed of light.

Early networks on the internet could only send and receive 10 characters per second. But compared to the 20Mbps connections that are currently common in many South African homes, this is exceedingly slow. Consider that one megabyte has 8 million bits to put that into perspective. The fastest speeds now offered in South Africa are 1Gbps fiber connections, a remarkable improvement over the bandwidth in the early 1990s.