STATEMENT: South African Mobile Rates Among Worst in the World, Telecoms Must Do More to Lower Prices
Issued by the Right2Know Campaign, 3 June 2014.
According to the recently published Global Information Technology Report (GITR) 2014, South Africa is ranked at number 128th out of 148 countries when it comes to prepaid mobile cellular tariffs.
The GITR series has been published by the World Economic Forum in partnership with INSEAD since 2002. The Report has accompanied and monitored ICT progress for more than a decade and raised awareness of the importance of ICTs for long-term competitiveness and well-being.
It further states that Sub-Saharan Africa slowly continues to develop its ICT infrastructure, especially by expanding the share of the population covered by, and having access to mobile telephony and by expanding the number of Internet users, which in countries like South Africa has almost doubled.
In January 2014, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) issued an announcement of changes to the tariffs one network charges another for calls received or terminated on its network. The decision was reportedly based on the need to reduce the high cost of communications, to act in the public interest and incentivise investment.
As the Right2Know Campaign, we support the lowering of tariffs even as major telecoms MTN, Vodacom and Cell C engage in a price war. The latest price plans released by the major telecoms are nothing more than clever marketing and promotional gimmicks. Prices must come down now and stay down permanently if South Africa is to expected to improve in global telecommunication cost rankings.
“One has to look at the profiteering practices of the private telecom sector and marvel at their failure to improve affordability despite recent infrastructure advancements. How long can MTN, Vodacom and Cell C expect to subsidise their infrastructure developments to the rich by profiteering from the poor?” ~ John Haffner – R2K Telecomunications Spokesperson.
