Nigeria: Consumers bear high spectrum costs in Nigeria, Ghana and elsewhere

Kigali, Rwanda – Telecommunication consumers in Africa would be primarily responsible for high spectrum costs in the region, as incalculable costs are pbaded on to them. That's how it was revealed As such, better spectrum pricing policies are needed in developing countries to improve the economic and social wellbeing of the billions of people who are not tied to mobile services High Speed.

The GSMA in a new report titled "Spectrum Pricing in Developing Countries", published by the Association on Tuesday in Kigali, Rwanda, at the GSMA Mobile 360 ​​Conference – Africa, Study found that the average spectrum prices, more than three times higher than in developed countries, when income is taken into account.

The GSMA pointed out that this high-spectrum pricing is a major hurdle to this study, conducted by GSMA Intelligence, also showed that governments are playing an active role in raising spectrum prices to maximize State revenues.

According to the report, high spectrum prices are tied to sovereign countries. In developing countries, average reserve prices and alarming reserve prices are five times higher in developing countries than in developed countries, after deduction of revenues.

The report also identifies a link between high spectrum prices and lower coverage. Brett Tarnutzer, director of Spectrum, GSMA, said, "Connecting everyone becomes impossible without better policy decisions on the spectrum." For too long, the success of spectrum auctions has been judged on the question of how much revenue can be collected rather than on the economic and social benefits of the connection between people. Spectrum policies that inflate prices and focus on short-term gains are inconsistent with our shared goals of providing better, cheaper mobile broadband services. These pricing policies will limit the growth of the digital economy and make it more difficult to eradicate poverty, improve health care and education, financial inclusion. and gender equality.

The GSMA study has evaluated more than 1,000 badignments from 2010 to 2017, making it the largest ever badysis of spectrum prices in developing countries, as well as factors and their potential impacts about consumers. He noted that not sharing a clear spectrum roadmap and putting in place poor auction rules are just some of the policy decisions that also drive high spectrum prices. developing countries.