PRETORIA, April 24 (Xinhua) -- South African Competition Commission's investigation found that the data price is high in the country as compared to other BRICS and African countries.
Tembinkosi Bonakele, commissioner of the Competition Commission, said mobile operators such as MTN and Vodacom charge higher prices in South Africa than they do in the other countries in which they operate.
"Mobile prepaid data prices in South Africa are high when benchmarked against a worldwide selection of countries and in comparison to other African countries," said Bonakele at a press briefing in Pretoria on Wednesday.
He stated that the retail pricing structure of mobile data is anti-poor and lacks transparency.
Bonakele gave an example that relative to a 1GB bundle, a consumer buying a 100MB bundle will pay roughly twice the price on a per bundle basis for the same data period validity.
Bonakele said, "The benchmarking exercise shows that lower income consumers may be exploited to a far greater degree relative to wealthier consumers."
The Competition Commission found that data pricing also lacks transparency, which undermines price competition.
Bonakele said some operators prefer to make use of promotions and free data rather than to drop headline prices. This results in few consumers knowing what they really pay per MB.
The Competition Commission also said the failure to release high demand spectrum due to delays in digital migration has raised the costs of mobile operators unnecessarily.
He said, "The release of spectrum will reduce operator cost. Careful thought must be given to the design of the spectrum allocation process to ensure that competition is prioritized."
The Competition Commission recommended that mobile operators make a commitment to reduce the headline tariff levels to the current effective level of charges, inclusive of occasional free data and promotions. They said if such a move is not forthcoming then a further scrutiny and potentially action at the wholesale level of the industry is necessary.
