Alison Gillwald and Muriuki Mureithi
The purpose of this paper is to understand the conditions that enabled the end of roaming charges in East Africa in 2006, achieving in weeks what European regulators had struggled…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand the conditions that enabled the end of roaming charges in East Africa in 2006, achieving in weeks what European regulators had struggled with for nearly a decade. To do so it aims to explore the factors that drove marginalized operator Zain to seize the competitive advantage created by it having licenses in three adjoining markets.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on the theory of disruptive competition and innovation pioneered by Clayton Christensen to explain the innovative and disruptive nature of the Zain business model. It is drawn on to explain why, despite Zain being unable ultimately to dominate its competitors, it had a sustained disruptive effect on the entire market. This provides a theoretical lens through which to view the empirical evidence acquired through in‐depth interviews and market analysis. This is used to develop a detailed case study on the dropping of roaming charges in East Africa.
Findings
The case study demonstrates the importance of an enabling policy and regulatory environment, which allowed operators to integrate historically separate national networks into cross‐border operations, undermining roaming markets in the region and ending roaming charges in East Africa forever. With the high price of communications in East Africa and the premium charges placed on international mobile roaming, the effect of this move was to compel other regional operators to follow suit, and further, to institute various other pricing strategies in an attempt to retain or recover their dominant positions. As a result, not only did roaming charges disappear across major networks, but the prices of various other mobile services also fell as subscriber numbers soared.
Research limitations/implications
Research in this area is severely constrained by the inability to access pricing, traffic and revenue data from operators that is regarded as competitively sensitive. As a result it is often difficult to assess the immediate gains and losses of competitors and failure to get consistent data over time, the ability to assess lags and long‐term positions. A longer term review of the impact of these developments on pricing and the dynamics of the East African market in future would provide valuable insight into the longer term effects of these developments.
Practical implications
As policy makers and regulators elsewhere in Africa start to emulate European “best practice” regulation, despite the difficulties mature and resourced regulators in the European Union face in instituting legally binding maximum tariffs for roaming, a valuable alternative policy and regulatory strategy exists in the creation of enabling competitive environments in which incentives to reduce to eliminate roaming charge, rather than retain environments in which international call termination on roaming phones can be arbitraged.
Social implications
Even though ultimately Zain was not successful as a disruptive competitor, it forced the dominant operators to reduce their roaming charges that resulted in sustained welfare gains.
Originality/value
This paper provides both novel theoretical insight and empirical evidence to explain the end of roaming charges in East Africa. It nuances perceptions in the popular and technical press that this was purely a market strategy that could be emulated anywhere else. It highlights the necessary enabling policy and regulatory environment that needed to be created and provides empirical evidence of the impact on competition in the market and analyses the outcomes of Zain's short term business strategy, against the longer term disruptive effect on the market.
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Christoph Stork, Enrico Calandro and Alison Gillwald
– The purpose of this paper is to analyse internet access and use trends in 11 African countries based on household and individual ICT survey data.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse internet access and use trends in 11 African countries based on household and individual ICT survey data.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses nationally representative data for households and individuals in residential and semi-residential areas, as defined by national census sample frames for 11 African countries.
Findings
While the 2007/2008 African ICT access and use survey demonstrated alarmingly little access to the internet on the continent, together with a large-scale absence of computers and smart phones, compounded by the high cost of connectivity, the mobile phone is now the key entry point for internet use. Internet access has increased significantly across all countries, as a result increasing internet penetration to 15.5 per cent across the 11 African countries surveyed by Research ICT Africa in 2011/2012. Mobile internet requires fewer ICT skills, less financial resources and does not rely on electricity at home, compared to computers or laptops. Other findings highlight the unevenness of internet take-up across and within countries. Thus, while the majority of the countries under investigation demonstrate increased mobile internet take-up, in Rwanda, Tanzania and Ethiopia, internet use remains negligible. In those countries where mobile internet is boosting connectivity, this is being driven by social networking applications.
Practical implications
The policy implications of the shift in significant numbers from negligible internet access at public access points serviced primarily by fixed access lines to mobile internet access are significant. Just as traditional reform strategies of increasing competition in the market increased access to voice services more successfully than traditional universal service strategies, mobile again appears to be addressing the internet gap. Competition in mobile markets appears to address the efficiency gap in the market, resulting in an increase in the choice of services and a reduction in prices. Strategies that seek to aggregate users at public access points, funded by complex levies and subsidies again seem to have been overtaken by the increasing availability of mobile internet access, as feature phones and smart phone become more available to individual users.
Social implications
Understanding prepaid mobile internet further provides a pro-poor dimension to public policies seeking to improve internet access, which historically has been available and affordable to the elite. The rest of the society had to rely on public access points, whether private internet cafés or schools and libraries.
Originality/value
This paper uses primary data that allow a better understanding of internet access and use in Africa. It provides policymakers and regulators with the evidence required for an informed ICT policy and regulation.
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Anne Milek, Christoph Stork and Alison Gillwald
Information communication technologies (ICTs) are widely seen as having the potential to contribute positively to economic growth and development and to improve the livelihoods…
Abstract
Purpose
Information communication technologies (ICTs) are widely seen as having the potential to contribute positively to economic growth and development and to improve the livelihoods and quality of life of individuals and households and yet access to ICTs and usage of them remains highly inequitable. This paper aims to identify areas of inequality in access to ICTs between men and women in Africa.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on the Research ICT Africa (RIA) household and individual ICT survey conducted in 17 African countries between 2007/2008 the paper provides an empirical basis for assessing gender dimensions of ICT access and usage. Additionally, focus group studies were conducted in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda to gain a greater qualitative understanding of access to and usage of ICTs from a gender perspective.
Findings
Although the results confirmed in many countries the widely held belief that men have greater access to ICTs than women in some instances more women than men owned mobile phones such as in South Africa and Mozambique. In Cameroon women were found to have greater knowledge of the internet than their male counterparts. Most significantly perhaps is the finding that when women have similar income, education and employment status they have comparable access to ICTs as their male counterparts. However, as women generally do not have the same access to those core factors that enhance ICT access and usage, their access to ICT is generally lower.
Originality/value
The quantitative as well as focus group results of this study confirm gender differences in access to ICTs, raising important questions about the points of policy intervention to redress such imbalances.
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The paper aims to identify issues in broadcasting and telecommunications regulation and law arising from technological convergence and to suggest a new framework for an integrated…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to identify issues in broadcasting and telecommunications regulation and law arising from technological convergence and to suggest a new framework for an integrated approach to policy and regulation.
Design/methodology/approach
A set of South African laws, regulations, bills and policy papers is reviewed to establish to what extent they promote, or at least adapt to, technological convergence using three tests: technological neutrality, integration of policy processes and a “level playing field” for competition.
Findings
It is suggested that current law and regulation fails to meet the South African Government's stated aim of promoting convergence. It is suggested that a reason for this may be the difference in the public interest “rationales” for broadcasting and telecommunications regulation, with the former being largely social and political and the latter largely economic. A new paradigm based on the constitutional principle of freedom of expression is suggested as providing a means of establishing a neutral public interest framework for developing and adapting regulation under conditions of technological convergence.
Research limitations/implications
The research methodology is qualitative. Further research on the economic, social and political welfare costs of regulatory failures to adapt to convergence may be helpful in informing policy, legal and regulatory debates in the future.
Originality/value
This paper suggests a new rights‐based means of direct comparison of public interest costs and benefits across broadcasting and telecommunications using a principle that is present in the South African constitution as well as in international law.
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Wallace Chigona, Johannes Willem Vergeer and Andile Simphiwe Metfula
This study aims to analyse how the media plays its role in the information communications technology (ICT) debate in a developing country context, by way of analysing the media…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to analyse how the media plays its role in the information communications technology (ICT) debate in a developing country context, by way of analysing the media discourse surrounding the South African Broadband Policy.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts a critical approach and uses critical discourse analysis, employing Habermas's theory of communicative action. Data for the study include the media reports on the South African Broadband Policy.
Findings
It is noted that: the media discourse was systematically distorted; the discourse was driven mainly by the government; and many actors were systematically excluded from the discourse, or opted not to engage in the debate. The low‐income category, the very group that should benefit from the policy, was excluded from the debate. The study notes further that the status of key actors in the policy affected the media's perception of the policy.
Originality/value
To increase the chances of success for policy, there is a need to include all stakeholders in the policy debate. This study notes how some actors were left out, and how others opted not to engage in the debate, which points to the need for strategies to promote participation in policy debate. It is noted, too, that the distortions could have resulted from lack of skills in the media, the enhancement of which could address the problem.
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This paper seeks to identify policy and regulatory bottlenecks that need to be overcome in order to stimulate private sector investment in backbone networks in selected African…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to identify policy and regulatory bottlenecks that need to be overcome in order to stimulate private sector investment in backbone networks in selected African countries (Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda).
Design/methodology/approach
It does so by exploring policy and regulatory frameworks and market structures that influence investment decisions on backbone infrastructure roll‐out; it investigates models and strategies adopted by the public sector to finance national backbone infrastructure; and it provides recommendations on how to stimulate private investment in backbone roll‐out by creating an enabling policy and regulatory environment.
Findings
Research findings show that the telecommunications sector in the selected African countries has witnessed the return of state‐led investment in the roll‐out of fibre backbones. The rationale for state‐led intervention has often been cited as market failure regarding investment in broadband backbone roll‐out. However, many of the policy and regulatory barriers to market entry remain, including protectionist legislation, which has limited private sector participation in investing in backbone.
Practical implications
The reality is that African governments are maintaining control over national backbones and, in some markets where the telecommunications infrastructure sector has been liberalised, the state‐owned operators may enter into direct competition with the private sector or may delay delivery by the private sector.
Originality/value
The value of the paper is that it provides evidence on how to improve the roll‐out and extension of national broadband backbone networks through the development of a policy and regulatory framework which facilitates private sector investment in this sector. The paper also makes recommendations to governments for the facilitation of private investment in backbone networks through the development of an enabling policy and regulatory environment.
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Roshanthi Lucas Gunaratne and Rohan Samarajiva
There are significant shortcomings in the current method of estimating the indicator “Proportion of internet users” by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in countries…
Abstract
Purpose
There are significant shortcomings in the current method of estimating the indicator “Proportion of internet users” by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in countries where demand-side data are unavailable. In the absence of demand-side surveys, governments calculate the proportion of internet users on the basis of the number of subscriptions and a multiplier, which leads to arbitrary values. Errors in such base indicators ripple through the system, causing significant errors in composite indicators, and should be minimised. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new evidence-based methodology, in the absence of demand-side surveys, to estimate the proportion of individuals using the internet.
Design/methodology/approach
This study found the drivers of internet use to be income and education. A regression analysis was conducted between internet users per 100 in countries that employed demand-side surveys and a new index based on the income and education components of the Human Development Index (HDI).
Findings
The regression analysis showed a strong correlation between the proportion of internet users in a country and the new income and education index. Using these data, a new methodology was developed that creates incentives for governments to conduct demand-side surveys and reduce the errors yielded by the previous methodology.
Social implications
It is proposed that this evidence-based estimation method be used by the ITU in the absence of demand-side surveys, instead of arbitrary multipliers applied to estimated subscription numbers provided by governments. If governments believe that their national circumstances justify higher numbers, they can conduct demand-side surveys.
Originality/value
This paper explores the possibility of using the readily available HDI data to define a new index that will provide a more accurate estimate of the proportion of individuals using the internet.