Pretoria University and ITWeb ran an online survey of mobile data services adoption and perceptions in South Africa. The outcome lends credibility to a sobering Brainstorm roundtable discussion on the topic last month.

Make no mistake, mobile data services (MDS) will one day be precisely what the WiFi punters, the Bluetooth evangelists and possibly even the 3G prophets say it will be. But right now, we`re doing well to get over SMS ringtones and, at a stretch, GPRS-borne personal information management.

In a survey conducted by Pretoria University and ITWeb, people from organisations in various sectors were asked for their impressions and predictions about MDS. In all, there were 372 respondents.