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It is conspicuous that mobile service providers have contributed immensely to the development of the country. It is pertinent to state that if things continue to wallow in this fashion and nothing is done in terms of increasing the tariff on calls and data, there is tendency for mobile service providers to scale down on their services or reduce the number of staff.
As the dollar continues to skyrocketing couple with the global economic downturn, the telecommunication sector will not survive if they are left unattended.
It will suddenly affect investment and employment that the people of Sierra Leone are badly in need of.
Speaking on the current data status in the country, one of the mobile operators says whilst they wait to hear from the authority on the planned stakeholder engagement, their sector continues to struggle with exponential increase in cost for what he the described as ‘Opex variables’.
It continued that all operators are selling below the cost price of data whilst operating expenses and other input costs continue to increase unabated. “Some of these cost are: increase in foreign exchange rate against the
Leones, increase in fuel cost of electricity tariff, cost of internet (Zoodlabs), cost of terrestrial fibre, cost of site construction materials and inflation”.
It wrapped up by disclosing that all the networks require a huge investment in order to maintain good quality of service and this requires a reasonable return of investment, which is currently farfetched. “If this trend is notaddressed, our ability to invest in the the networks will invariably affect the will invariably affect the quality of service over time,” he warned.
Recent statement by the Minister of Information and Communication, Honorable Abdul Rahman Swaray, confirms on Epic Radio that the cost of production for network service providers has gone up considerably. He added that the network service providers have blamed the Ministry of Information and Communications for not allowing them to increase the cos of tariffs and data.
“I also buy data, I know it is a difficult economic climate for everyone,” stating further that he is happy that common sense has prevailedthat the price of data was reversed when it was suddenly increased. He further argues that he is well aware that the telecommunication sector is a business and sometime in the future, if the global economic downturn does not improve, definitely the prices of tariff will be increased, but it will be done together with all stakeholders in the telecommunication sector including the consumers.
Recent data survey by the cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide- data/pricing revealed that the price of data in Sierra Leone has been spiralling downwards over the years resulting in the country being the lowest in data tariff in Accra and the world. The data furthered disclosed that Sierra Leone has the lowest data price per GB in Africa; standing at $0.33 USD.
