Most cellphone users will not benefit from the recent decision by mobile operators to reduce the costs of calls across networks.
Most cellphone users will not benefit from the recent decision by mobile operators to reduce the costs of calls across networks.
“In order for this reduction to be meaningful, it must be the first in a series of reductions,” says Prof Jane Duncan, Highway Africa Chair of Media and Information Society at Rhodes University, who conducted a survey in Rhini last year that explored the high cost of cellphone communications.
According to the survey, residents of Joza and Fingo townships spend an average of 26% of their income on cellphone airtime, whereas the International Telecommunications Union says that these costs should not make up more than 4% of total household income.
Following a regulatory process set in motion by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) under section 10 of the Electronic Communications Act in September last year, MTN and Vodacom operators proposed a reduction in peak time rates from R1.25 to 89c a minute in March 2010, 85c a minute in October 2011 and 80c a minute by October 2012.
The current 77c for off-peak calls will remain the same until 2013. The reduction of mobile termination rates (MTRs – the cost of calling across networks and to land lines) will start on 1 March on prepaid contracts.
Telkom followed suit on Tuesday in a letter to Parliament which promises a drop in the peak rate for fixed to-mobile calls from 1 March by 36c, a 22% reduction.
Duncan says: “The proposed reduction in the MTR will make very little difference. It requires a massive reduction to make a significant difference to the people we surveyed.“
The point is that the situation should never have been allowed to go this far. “Icasa dropped the ball on keeping tariffs affordable, especially prepaid tariffs, and the Portfolio Committee on Communications exercised oversight extremely late in the day,” she said.
