According to a new research by Research and Markets, Mobile Africa Tariff Tracker and Analysis 2014 shows that the average tariffs in Africa have gone down.
The report shows that the average post paid cost went down to USD 36.77 per month from USD 43.12 per month the previous year.
But prepaid rates have varied in the continent. “Pre Paid domestic call rates in Africa range from USD 0.016 up to USD 0.44 per minute. Rates vary according to the recharge amount and the time of day called.”
“But within this average there are a wide spread of price plans available which range from below USD 1 per month to above USD 100 USD per month (a total of 27 companies), with the highest plan charged at USD 293 including 5,000 minutes, 100 SMS and 1 GB of data,” the research noted.
The report also denotes that African mobile number operators are introducing a variety of user incentives to differentiate their services.
“These include the bundling of free or partially subsidised devices, discounts according to call duration, discounts for on-net calls, free on-net calls and discounts for specific on-net calls to pre-registered numbers,” the report says
This helps the prices of mobile plans to be revised downwards due to competition.
The full report surveyed a total of 74 MNOs in 37 countries across Africa and includes 577 price plans in total – of which 358 are postpaid contracts.