Critical Thinking Forum: Why are we paying so much for data?
new licensees to utilise. One proposition from the audience was for policy and regulation to compel mobile operators who already own infrastructure to share that infrastructure with burgeoning mobile operators. In order for this possibility to occur, technical and economic feasibility assessments will need to be undertaken by the communications regulator, but this costs time and money.
Punishing the poor
South Africa is plagued by huge economic disparity: the Gini coefficient rates South Africa as one of the most unequal societies. The poorest of the poor, who urgently need access to data to change their circumstances, are the ones most affected by high data costs. Basically, the more data one can afford to buy lessens the “per megabyte” rate which the service costs. This is a model designed to increase profits by increasing the volume of cheaper packages at a higher per megabyte rate.
Representatives from Vodacom spoke of how in the past a large number of their subscribers had moved from monthly data packages to the daily packages, which according to economies of scale is more expensive than buying a 5kg sack of maize meal per day. But there are packaging costs involved in the fast-moving consumer goods market that do not necessarily exist in the “packaging” of data bundles, said Iman, while questioning the moral indifference of the mobile operators.
Public participation
Public participation and pressure seem to be the only way that consumers will obtain justice. South Africa has regulatory institutions such as the Competition Commission and industry specific regulators such as Icasa. Every so often, public participation is sought to bring amendments to existing regulatory frameworks, but of all the stakeholders, the ITC industry is the most active and it submits proposals that benefit consumers only slightly, without compromising their profits.
Amandla.mobi encourages public participation through engagement and the use of petitions to educate the public about their rights. Mobile operators built their business models based upon profit before people and they need to be taught how to adjust to our changing world, where access to data is a basic human right, stressed De Lanerolle. Data has become a utility much like water and electricity, which are subsidised by government; the question becomes, is a similar model necessary to address the issue of access to data? And the answer is yes, but consumers need to participate, and mobile networks need to report to parent companies that invested in the current infrastructure in search of profits.
Amended End-user and Subscriber Service Charter
Icasa’s soon-to-be-concluded End-user and Subscriber Service Charter seeks to address the major issues related to transparency, expiration of data and the high price of out-of-bundle rates. The draft regulations, if adopted by the end of March, will translate into new rules of engagement governing telecommunications and changes relating to the expiration of data bundles.
Panellists, having contributed to the charter, still see loopholes in it that do not address the issue of data pricing punishing the poor. The charter was premised on the identification of primary markets, that Icasa identified as requiring intervention with regards to transparency and pricing. The transparency will aid in empowering the consumer to make informed decisions, such as being notified at regular intervals of the amount of data bundles available and the option to opt for out-of-bundle pricing. The expiration of data is proposed to be extended to a period of three years, but the poor, at least for now, remain with the desire to have enough data to last them just for today. And this is the nub of the matter: that policy sometimes disregards the needs of the poor.