[kictanet] Bitange for President? Extended due to Public Demand-internet price?

Walubengo J jwalu at yahoo.com
Mon Aug 15 16:06:55 EAT 2011


@ Dennis,

good question, how low, is low prices? put differently, what is AFFORDABLE internet prices? Shouldn't selling 5MB @ 5/- per day be considered affordable?

A better question might be, of what use is 5MB in day - considering that a 5-10paged research paper is typically 2-5MBs gone, a 2minutes youtube clip is probably 20MBs gone and general news reading and searching may require 15-20MB per day.

My own monthly bandwidth consumption on mobile internet (tampered down due to price constraints) is about 1,000MB per month - and this is on lower side because i do get "free" internet at work. So assuming a typical mwananchi buying bandwidth daily (ka-dogo economy) @ 5/= per day per 5MB; they would end up paying 1,000Ksh per month (for some not so meaningful access - read chat, fb, but not for  research, programming, and other high
 level tasks that require real bandwidth).

So anyway is 1,000Ksh per month affordable? To Bob C, MJ, the PS and possibly everyone on this list - ofcourse it is. But to the average Kenyan (majority) whose income is around Ksh 8,000/= per month? it definitely is not affordable because it represents a huge chunk (1/8) of his salary. 

ITU defines Affordability as ratio of the monthly BROADBAND internet costs against average national incomes. In Kenya this ratio is prohibitive and needs to be addressed holistically rather than through one-sided marketing tactics.

walu. 






 

--- On Sat, 8/13/11, Dennis Kioko <dmbuvi at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Dennis Kioko <dmbuvi at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Bitange for President? Extended due to Public Demand-internet price?
To: "Walubengo J" <jwalu at yahoo.com>
Cc: kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke
Date: Saturday, August 13, 2011, 8:47
 PM

Hi, From Safaricom, there are daily bundles of 5 MB , 10 MB and  25 MB from at Ksh  5, Ksh 8 and Ksh  20 in addition to the rates shown at this page, http://www.kenyandroid.com/component/k2/item/167-kenyan-data-bundle-price-comparison . If this is not low from Mobile data providers, then how else can we define low. 

As to fixed internet prices, maybe we need to have an idea of how much costs they incur in terms of way leaves, them we can define if their charges are too high. However, the result of the govt lowering the cost of NoFBI is yet to be felt. 
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