Business Maverick: Competition watchdog names and shames MTN, Vodacom for high data prices By Ray Mahlaka
Mobile pre-paid data in South Africa is expensive, compared with most sub-Saharan Africa countries, the Competition Commission has unsurprisingly found. Data prices that are charged in the country by telecommunications titans, Vodacom and MTN, are higher than those they charge in markets outside of South Africa.
He says MTN and Vodacom, which are early pioneers in the telecommunications industry because they were founded in 1994, have become so big that they cannot even be challenged by smaller competitors Cell C and Telkom. The same trend emerges for MTN. For a 1GB, MTN charged its South Africa-based customers $11.95 in 2017, while it levied a cost of $8.34 in Uganda for the same bundle, Ghana , Ivory Coast , Nigeria and Rwanda .
“Much has changed in the mobile data pricing sector in the past 18 months. One such significant change was MTN’s decision in February of this year to cut its out-of-bundle data rate by up to 75% for pre-paid customers,” says O’Sullivan. It’s the poor that are hit hard by high data prices. “Lower income consumers may be exploited to a far greater degree relative to wealthier consumers,” says Bonakele.
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