This section features reports of the research conducted under the WDR umbrella by research centres around the globe.
Payphone use steady Print E-mail
Written by Steve Esselaar   
Thursday, 16 February 2006
LINK CentreIn January the LINK Centre, WDR’s partner in South Africa, held a briefing for the South African regulator, ICASA. The briefing was planned to share the results of South African part of the e-access and usage household survey that is reported on in the report Towards an African e-Index. One of the areas highlighted in the briefing was the important role that payphones still play as a communications tool.

As result of the penetration of mobile phones, payphones have been de-emphasised. Recent studies, such as the Vodafone report “Africa: The Impact of Mobile Phones”, (summarised in figure 1) have shown that there is virtually no use of payphones at all.
figure 1
                                              Figure 1

While results such as these depend upon the definition of payphones it is extremely odd that there is virtually no usage of either payphones or community service phones in the Vodafone report. The E-index survey, which defined payphones broadly to include public payphones (such as Telkom payphones), private phone kiosks, community access points and telecentres and defined usage as having used a payphone over the last three months, indicates very high payphone usage in South Africa of up to 70% on public payphones (for e.g. Telkom payphones) and over 40% for private phone kiosks (figure 2).
figure 2
                                              Figure 2

Based on studies such as the Vodafone report, the assumption is often made that as mobile phone penetration increases, the usage of payphones will decline. Clearly this is not true. Instead, our conclusion is that people make use of what we have called a “multiple communications strategy”. That is, people will make use of any communications tool given two key factors: accessibility and affordability. If a payphone is not close by (within easy walking distance) people will not use it. Affordability is the second key determinant of usage. Typically, personal mobile phones are used at the beginning of the month when they have cash available. As there is less and less money available as the month progresses, so the use of all forms of payphones increases with people spending as little as R0.9 ($0.15) on a call (and consequently not saving up for a mobile prepaid card). The type of payphone used (e.g. public payphone, container [mobile] phone) is determined by the call destination – if the call is to a landline, then a public payphone is used. If it is to a mobile phone during peak hours, then a mobile container phone is used.

With such variegated usage, figure 3 underscores the fact that expenditure on payphones is not decreasing. Expenditure for over 90% of payphone users has either remained the same or increased, giving lie to the argument that payphones are used less as personal mobile penetration increases.
figure 3
                                        Figure 3