By Abdulaziz Samura
It is obvious 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 increase rapidly 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, Chief Executive Officer of Africell Sierra Leone, Shadi Gerjawi said on Monday that whilst they wait to hear from the authority on the planned stakeholder engagement, their sector continues to struggle with exponential increase in operational costs.
He continued that all operators are selling below the cost price of data whilst operating expenses and other input costs continue to increase exponentially.
“Some of these cost are: increase in foreign exchange rate against the Leones, increase in fuel cost and electricity tariff, increase in cost of internet (Zoodlabs), cost of terrestrial fibre, cost of site construction materials and inflation.”
He said that 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 far-fetched. “If this trend is not addressed, our ability to invest in the networks will be hindered and this will invariably affect the quality of service over time,” he warned.
The Minister of Information and Communication, Honorable Abdul Rahman Swaray, confirmed on Epic Radio recently 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 cost of tariffs and data.
“I also buy data, and I know it is a difficult economic climate for everyone,” he is quoted as saying.
He said that he was happy that common sense has prevailed that the price of data was reversed when it was suddenly increased. He further argued that he understands the telecommunication sector is a business and sometime in the future, if the global economic downturn does not improve, the prices of tariff will be increased. “But it will be done together with all stakeholders in the telecommunication sector including the consumers,” he said.
Recent data survey by the cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data/pricing revealed that the price of data in Sierra Leone has been spiraling downwards over the years resulting in the country being the lowest in data tariff.
The data shows that Sierra Leone has one of the lowest data price per GB in Africa; standing at $0.33 USD.