#DataMustFall set to go to Parliament

A graph representing data costs in African countries.

A graph representing data costs in African countries.

Published Sep 20, 2016

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Durban - Data service providers will form part of the public hearings on the Cost to Communicate in Parliament on Wednesday.

The cost of data in South Africa was highlighted by online radio station's Touch Central DJ, Thabo Molefe, popularly known as "Tbo Touch" to radio listeners, complained about the prices. He said they were an obstacle to education and mentorship, skills training, financial assistance, job searching and recruiting.

The #datamustfall hashtag went viral.

On his Twitter account, Tbo Touch said: "We going to mount an argument that evidence based to @ParliamentofRSA we are not just making loud noise without substance."

A hearing is set to be held on Wednesday after the "movement" gained traction online and television channels interviewed him about his campaign.

He had given South African networks 30 days to make changes to their prices.

Arthur Goldstuck, managing director of technology company, World Wide Worx, said the fight against high data prices was not something new.

"We, as World Wide Worx, have been campaigning for the past six years for the cost of pay-as-you-go data to come down. The only success has been in the drop in the cost of bundles, which are highly competitive if one buys a big bundle."

He also said: "However, pay-as-you-go remains prohibitively expensive, from R1 to R2 per megabyte. For the typical prepaid user, this is coming off their airtime, and is perceived not only as unaffordable, but also as stealing airtime."

This meant that only rich people could afford the high costs of data. Goldstuck said they wanted the price of data to be about 20-40 cents.

"South Africa ranks well out of the top 10 African countries in terms of lowest cost of data. That is inexcusable, given the needs of the country and the means of the operators," Goldstuck said.

This was even more so because there had been a massive growth in data usage, and in a few years revenue from data was set to overtake the money which service providers got from traditional voice calls. It was unlikely mobile operators would bring their prices down soon, he said.

Institute for Race Relations communication analyst, Kerwin Lebone, agreed and said there would be "no changes any time soon or this year.

"South Africans should not be paying the data costs they are."

But he said the parliamentary hearing was a sign of progress being made. Changes could come about in a year-and-a-half, or two years.

Lower prices would benefit entrepreneurs who would need access to the internet to conduct their business.

He did say, though, that the quality of the data was better, but the price was still high.

Vodacom's spokesman, Byron Kennedy, said they would be making a presentation at the hearings.

"Central to Tbo Touch's #datamustfall campaign is the cost associated with access to information that advances the employability of South Africans, such as education and job searching."

He said Vodacom had spent R26 billion on network infrastructure over three years, including R8bn for this year.

Without this investment, this would mean people would get less coverage and lower download speeds.

The cost of delivering mobile services varied considerably between countries.

Some of the costs were set by the governments and were influenced by factors which included taxes, spectrum and licence fees. Other factors were the size of the country, population density and availability of fixed line infrastructure that connected mobile base stations, Kennedy said.

"Countries with enormous populations can leverage economies of scale," Kennedy said.

"The cost of services in rural areas, in particular, is very high as this requires the funding of everything from access roads and diesel for generators, to microwave repeaters for connectivity. Often this rural infrastructure does not provide an economic return and it is, in effect, subsidised by urban areas," Kennedy said.

Telkom's Leigh-Ann Francis said they sold their data on prepaid packages at a rate of 29 cents per megabyte at its cheapest offering and one of its packages sold a gigabyte at R69.

She said they had 6 000 wi-fi hot spots around the country where Telkom subscribers get free access to internet.

She said some of their products were at the forefront of lower data prices.

MTN's chief corporate officer for South Africa, Graham de Vries, said: "MTN can confirm that it will be taking part in the public hearings on the Cost to Communicate."

MTN, however, did not respond to the other questions sent by the Daily News.

Cell C's media relations manager, Candice Jones, said they had been key in driving down the cost of communicating in South Africa by bringing "real" competition to the market.

"In fact, consumers have benefited massively from this competition as evidenced in the recent study commissioned by the National Treasury that found that competition to MTN and Vodacom, driven mainly by Cell C, has saved the South African consumer more than R47bn between 2010 and 2015," Jones said.

She said they offered the most competitive data rates in the market, with data available from as little as R10 a gigabyte or less than 1c per megabyte.

Jones said their prepaid products provided customers with free bonus value upon each recharge.

Daily News

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