CAPE TOWN - The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) has compared the cost of data within Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – the BRICS nations, as per request by the public.
Its findings are published in a report analysing the tariff plans offered by local operators.
Icasa looked at the price of 500MB, 1GB and 2GB packages in each country and compared them.
According to the data, China is the most expensive region to buy data with 500MB costing you $28.75 on average.
Brazil was placed 2nd with 500 MB costing $6.64 and South Africa is the third most expensive with 500 MB costing $5.72.
Keep in mind, Icasa only looked at the average cost of data. Additionally, Icasa also looked at the cheapest and most expensive data packages in each country.
In South Africa, the body found that the difference between the cheapest ($7.15) and most expensive 2GB package ($19.57) was as much as $12.42.
In the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) the price of data in South Africa is actually below the average.
“SA does not have the most expensive prepaid data bundle prices for the 500MB, 1GB, and 2GB in the SADC region. It is also not the cheapest, however, its prices are below the average price of all the SADC prices across the categories,” said Icasa.
In SADC region, the country with the most expensive data is Botswana where 500MB will cost you $26.95 and in Zimbabwe, a 1GB and 2GB of data will cost you $30 and $50 respectively.
Figure 1: Figure 1 shows a comparison of the cheapest per minute (billed per second) tariff plans namely Vodacom Anytime Per Second, MTN Pay Per Second, Cell C 66c on Prepaid and Telkom SIM SONKE.
Figure 2: Here is the comparison of data prices in BRICS countries.
The prices are listed in US dollars using the global market exchange rate.
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