Johannesburg — TOO little effort is being made to encourage the proliferation of internet cafes in SA, even though they are an efficient way of taking communication services to remote or impoverished areas.

The entire country is served by only about 135 internet cafes, compared to an estimated 50000 in India, which suffers a similar massive economic gap between the rich and poor, said Ramon Thomas, MD of research house NETucation.

"A lot of people in SA don't have enough money to buy their own computer or have a telephone line and pay for a dial-up connection, so their only alternative is to use an internet cafe," he said. The fees charged by internet service providers such as M-Web showed they were not interested in reducing costs for such people, so internet cafes had an important role in providing access to the masses, Thomas said.

SA had lost its position as a leading player in using technology to bridge the digital divide. The world's first internet cafe opened in 1994 and Johannesburg welcomed a cafe of its own in 1995. But that groundbreaking progress had fizzled out, he said.

Taiwan has 4000 internet cafes generating revenue of about R2,5bn a year. Most users are young people, thanks to a boom in popularity for networked computer games.

Taiwan's industry had flourished, thanks to efforts by rival companies to co-operate for the good of the industry as a whole, Thomas said. Growth in SA was partly being stifled because rival internet cafe operators did not seem willing to co-operate.

The statistics for India are less reliable, but one Indian newspaper claims that the country has 50000 internet cafes.

The dearth of internet cafes in SA is alleviated slightly by the presence of 600 public internet terminals in post offices and by 18 post offices that have internet access along with printing and faxing services.

Many other communal telecommunication centres have been set up in rural areas, but closed because they ran out of money or there was not enough interest or technical knowledge to keep them active.

NETucation is setting up a database of internet cafes, listing their location, opening times, the number of computers they have and their hourly fees.

The average cost is R27 an hour, with the cheapest charging R6 and one Sandton centre charging R75.

Research has shown a direct correlation between the number of computers installed and the profitability of the business, since more people will visit a centre if they know computers are likely to be available.

Cafes could also boost their business by setting up Wi-Fi hot spots so people could bring in their own laptop and connect to the internet wirelessly, said Thomas. That would prove useful for customers, as internet cafes have technicians available , while customers using hotspots in coffee shops or hotels often have to fend for themselves if they encounter a technical hitch.

In SA, most people using internet cafes are adults looking for jobs or conducting business communications. Only 40% are teenagers playing games.

Thomas said umbrella organisations such as the Internet Service Providers Association should help the internet reach more people by negotiating lower bandwidth fees for entrepreneurs setting up internet cafes.

What could drive their growth next year will be the government's decision to legalise voice calls over the internet. Instead of just attracting people keen to use a computer, the cafes could serve people with no interest in computers, but who need to make long-distance phone calls.