Internet price will soon drop – Ursula

Company News from Saturday, April 6, 2019

Source: Starrfmonline.com

2019-04-06

The government of Ghana has begun processes to reduce the cost of the Internet, said Minister of Communication Ursula Owusu-Ekuful.

There will be an industry forum at the beginning of next month, said Ms. Owusu-Ekuful to build consensus on the way forward.

Ms. Owusu-Ekuful said it during a recent courtesy visit to World Bank Vice President for Africa, Hafez Ghanem. Ghanem arrived in Ghana on Sunday, March 24 as part of a three-day mission to the country.

The research results published in October 2018 by the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) showed that more than 2.3 billion people live in countries where only 1 GB of mobile data is not affordable .

The 2018 affordability report warned that the high cost of the connection is keeping billions of dollars offline and is further and further away from the global goal of universal Internet access.

The report, which badessed policy frameworks designed to advance affordable Internet access in 61 low- and middle-income countries, found that more than 60 per cent of countries had unaffordable Internet access. Of the 61 countries surveyed, only 24 had affordable Internet access, where 1 GB of mobile data cost less than 2% of average income.

In the countries badyzed, only 1 GB of data costs more than 5% of average monthly income; prices skyrocket to around 20% of average income in a handful of countries

The report also found that the growth in the number of Internet users has slowed down. The UN had initially estimated that a 50% global internet penetration would be reached by the end of 2017; slower growth in Internet usage and access means that we do not expect to achieve this goal until mid-2019.

Again, according to the report, policies have barely changed. The pace of policy changes to lower prices online has been the slowest improvement to date. Measures of policy frameworks in place to allow greater affordability increased by only 1% in 2017, despite the growing recognition of the crucial relationship between online access and economic growth.

Ms. Owusu-Ekuful, Vice President of the World Bank for Africa, spoke about the measures taken by the Government of Ghana to bring down Internet prices.

She said that a high level commitment with the regulator and operators of the sector had been going on for some time already to promote greater infrastructure sharing and competition, with the aim of lowering the costs of 39; Internet.

"The appetite for data in this country is huge and we can not meet it. So we see there is an opportunity, but also a business opportunity for the private sector, "she said.

"So we started holding meetings on a number of issues, including: sim recording, registration of equipment identity, among other things, to clean this space and make it more secure and less user-friendly to use. users when formulating criminal activities. We will have an industry forum early next month to highlight all these discussions and build consensus on the way forward, "she added.