Drive to reduce high price of data

Substantial cut to cost of communicating in SA needed, Icasa tells parliament

COMMUNICATIONS industry regulator Icasa has assured parliament it will fight for the high cost of data to come down‚ specifically targeting high out-of-bundle data costs and expiring data bundles.

Icasa said yesterday the high cost of communicating would be tackled in its new regulations‚ with South Africa said to have some of the highest costs in the world.

“The cost to communicate must come down . . . and it must come down significantly,” Independent Communications Authority of South Africa acting chair Ruben Mohlaloga told parliament.

Icasa appeared before parliament’s select committee on communications and public enterprises to detail the high costs of communicating in the country.

Currently‚ only about 40% of South Africans have access to a smart phone or a tablet‚ but with this number growing each year‚ data usage is expected to exceed the use of voice services soon.

Of particular concern to Icasa are the high costs of out-of-bundle data and the expiry of data bundles after 30 days.

Mohlaloga also said those who bought smaller data bundles ended up paying more than those who could afford to buy bigger ones.

He told the committee that Vodacom charged R2 per megabyte for out-of-bundle data‚ while MTN charged 99 cents‚ Cell C R1.10 and Telkom 29 cents.

In contrast‚ Vodacom‚ Telkom and Cell C users who bought a 100megabyte data bundle would pay just 29 cents and MTN users 35 cents per megabyte.

Buying a 10 gigabyte bundle lowers the cost even more drastically‚ with Vodacom and MTN users paying 6c per megabyte and Telkom and Cell C users paying 5c per megabyte.

A comparison of South Africa’s one- and two-gigabyte data bundle costs with other countries in the SADC region revealed that data costs in Tanzania‚ Malawi‚ Mozambique and Lesotho were all lower than in South Africa.

“There is no justification for operators to charge high out-of-bundle rates‚” Icasa’s Leweng Mphahlele told the committee.

He said operators incurred no extra costs to provide data out-of-bundle and as such‚ should not charge the exorbitant rates they did.

“Icasa is also of the opinion that data should not expire‚” he said.

Mphahlele said that according to the National Credit Act‚ vouchers‚ like data vouchers‚ should expire after three years and not 30 days.

He said Icasa was looking to address these issues in the revised end user and subscriber service charter regulations‚ which set out the minimum standards to which service providers must adhere to protect the rights of users.

Committee chairwoman Ellen Prins said service providers would be called to appear before the committee as South Africans needed effective and cheaper communication.