A message from our CEO
The vast majority of people living in the dense urban townships of this continent connect to the internet via mobile data on their smartphones. This data is expensive and sold almost exclusively in a capped format. You buy x amount of data and you have to recharge when it’s depleted. This model ensures that most of the continent’s urban population has access to the internet, but they are not active participants in the digital economy.
The problem?
The current mobile data model does not facilitate pervasive internet access in a meaningful way for lower-income areas.
Bottled vs Piped water – an analogy
Bottled water is like mobile data. It is sold in small / fixed qualities at a high price. It is designed to be used sparingly while on the go. It certainly has an application, but not for washing the dishes or watering your garden. For that, we use the municipal water piped into our homes. It is sold in bulk, the water flows fast, and it is far cheaper per litre than bottled water.
The wealthiest of our society use both bottled and piped water. They select between the two options based on the application at hand. These people have the luxury of the same choice when it comes to data consumption. Their homes and offices have fast-piped internet access (fibre) for high bandwidth applications like streaming video and large file downloads. While out and about, they use their mobile data on their phones sparingly for low bandwidth applications like WhatsApp or emails and internet browsing. Stopped in your car at the traffic lights, and a big operating system download, or a big video file attachment comes through to your phone… They wait until they get home or at the office to access that piped, fast, uncapped fibre internet.
Most urban township dwellers don’t have this option. It’s mobile data only. Want to wash your car? Buy a big bottle of water from the spaza shop. Want to watch a YouTube video to learn something new or stream a TV series to entertain your family? Sorry chaps, you will have to use that mobile data.
This injustice, where the poorest of the poor have to pay exponentially more than the wealthy for something as fundamental to human development as meaningful internet access, is what drives us.
Our Team is dedicated to finding new ways to get piped internet access to everyone living inside an urban township. For us, it should not matter if you live in a formal brick structure or an informal structure. Our goal is to bring fast, uncapped affordable internet to everyone.
To be clear, this means we are deploying internet to every home inside our coverage area. Fibre internet that is fast, uncapped and offered on a pay-as-you-go basis, from as little as R5 for a full day’s access to piped internet.
So, when that big bandwidth application comes along, use your PayGoZo fibre pass anywhere within our coverage area. When you are outside the area, choose carefully which apps to use with your limited mobile data.
At PayGoZo, we think that’s the rift of the digital divide getting just a little narrower.