According to ICASA's State of the ICT Sector Report 2025, South African telecommunications revenue grew 11.7% last year. On the surface, the industry is healthy. Look closer, and a different picture emerges, one that should alarm every executive in this sector.
Mobile voice revenue fell nearly 8% in a single year, continuing a five-year collapse. Person-to-person SMS is effectively dead, propped up only by automated banking alerts and OTPs. Meanwhile, prepaid data revenue surged nearly 13%, and prepaid subscriptions grew at more than double the rate of post-paid. The mass market has voted, they prefer flexibility over lock-in, and they are your growth engine.
But the most staggering number in the report is this, R159.3 billion over two-thirds of total mobile services revenue, came from customers accessing social media platforms. Facebook, WhatsApp, and TikTok alone generated more than R147 billion. You are no longer selling "the internet." You are selling access to Mark Zuckerberg's apps.
You're Not a Telecom Anymore. You're Facebook's Toll Collector.
Connect these dots. Legacy voice and SMS are dying. Prepaid is now the dominant, most dynamic segment. And your primary revenue stream is functionally a toll for someone else's platforms. The narrative is clear, you have been unbundled. Your customer relationship has been intermediated into near invisibility. When a customer buys a data bundle, they are not thinking about your network or your brand. They are thinking about scrolling their feed. You are the invisible utility enabling someone else's customer relationship.
This has profound strategic implications. First, your pricing power has moved. The value of a data bundle is now anchored to the utility of social media apps. If TikTok changes its compression algorithms, your perceived value changes overnight. Second, your investment priorities are misaligned. Chasing mobile data means doubling down on a commoditized asset controlled by platform companies. Fibre-to-the-home, by contrast, enables high-value applications, remote work, 4K streaming, telemedicine, where customers value the connection itself. Third, your prepaid customers have no loyalty and no reason to engage with your brand beyond the moment of purchase. You have trained your growth segment to be ruthlessly price sensitive.
The R159 Billion Wake-Up Call: Your Best Customer Doesn't Know Your Name
Here is my point of view. Stop treating voice and SMS as products worth defending. Give them away. Every rand spent preserving those margins is wasted. Second, treat prepaid as premium, not discount. Create loyalty features that matter, cloud storage, family safety tools, a wallet they use daily. Give them a reason to open your app. Third, acknowledge that your data revenue has been captured. Negotiate with the platforms. They need your network. Start charging accordingly.
The report shows a sector with growing revenue but declining strategic relevance. You built the roads well. But the most valuable real estate is the destination, not the asphalt. Your customers are driving to Facebook's destinations. It is time to build your own, or charge a proper toll for access to theirs.
