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Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Data remains an expensive luxury in Africa but free internet may not come free

Data remains an expensive luxury in Africa but free internet may not come free: "In South Africa one gigabyte of data on mobile networks – the only means of accessing the internet for most – is R149 (pre-paid). This means that for millions of people in the country data is a luxury.

So when mobile operators start giving some of this valuable commodity for free it warrants attention. From July, the country’s third-largest mobile services provider Cell C started offering some services such as Facebook and Wikipedia for free without paying for the data.

In the telecoms industry this is called zero-rating.

This is not the only example of zero-rating in South Africa. In September, the country’s second largest operator MTN announced a deal for its on-demand internet video service FrontRow. MTN now allows streaming of videos without data charges. This is not insignificant, as an hour-long television programme can use over 300 megabytes of data." 'via Blog this'

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