Despite increasing access to technology, not to mention the rapidly growing penetration of inexpensive Smartphones, costly data continues to hinder internet penetration in the Nigeria.
While many studies note that access prices are falling around the world, we find that the cost of fixed broadband remains about 40 percent of an average citizen’s monthly income across Africa – most of those who are not connected simply cannot afford to be.
“Across the countries surveyed by Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), a fixed broadband connection costs the average citizen approximately 40 percent of their monthly income, eight times more than the affordability target set by the UN Broadband Commission in 2011. Mobile broadband is cheaper but still double the UN threshold, averaging 10 percent of monthly income — about as much as developing country households spend on housing,” Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) said in a statement.
According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), broadband can beconsidered affordable when it is at or below five percent of the average monthly income.
A report from internet.org and browser maker Opera Software has highlighted the high cost of data as a major obstacle.Internet usage in Nigeria has been on the rise over the last decade with a 16 percent increment from 2013. Currently ranked 8th globally in terms of internet usage, with over 75 million accessing the internet today, internet penetration remains to be a concern.
The UN Broadband Commission has set a target of entry-level Internet access priced at less than 5 percent of GNI per capita. While 23 out of the 51 countries survey by Alliance for Affordable Internet in its latest report have met this target on an aggregate basis, at present, not a single emerging or developing country can claim to meet this benchmark for those two billion potential users that survive on less than $2 a day.
“Unnecessarily high prices, in tandem with a failure to expand public access, are still conspiring to bar billions from accessing the life changing potential of the web”, Sonia Jorge, Executive Director, Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) said in a recent statement.
Only an estimated 37.59 percent of Nigerians have access to the internet, further underscoring the need for strategic importance to the development of internet infrastructure in the country. Majority of internet users in Nigeria however, first access the internet through mobile devices, bypassing desktop PCs, hence mobile penetration is growing massively.
However, the amount consumers spend on mobile data is still prohibitively high, especially when compared to their counterparts in developed countries. “Consumers in developing markets spend 12 times the percentage of their per capita GDP as consumers in the United Kingdom or United States,” according to reports by Internet.org and Opera.
For example, a 1GB data plan (PAY AS YOU GO) on MTN Nigeria mobile network would cost around N3, 500, whereas it would cost around £5 (N1, 351.55) on O2 UK mobile network.
Some would argue that consumers in developed and emerging marketplaces differ widely in how they chose to pay for Internet access. It’s important to also note that as people in emerging markets begin to spend more time on their mobiles, the high cost of data can be detrimental for app developers, or at least force them to figure out new ways to package their apps. For example, game developers in Asia have to compress game packages, consequently sacrificing critical qualities.
“People seem to think the lower end of the market is not data intensive, but as the costs come down, we are seeing it is, So there is room for growth there”, said Bruce Main, a money-manager at Ivy Asset Management. He went on to praise Mr Dabengwa, CEO MTN Group Ltd (MTN), for the company’s focus on data cost cut and margin improvements which he described as “encouraging”.
‘Right of Way’ permit, frequent fibre cuts due to sabotage and road construction as well dearth of last mile infrastructure are amongst several reasons why bandwidth, a major ingredient for telecommunications service delivery especially for data and video, has remained elusive to Nigerians due to high cost.
DAN OJABO
