Of recent, in quite a number of discussions on MobilityNigeria, there has been much agitation for mobile operators to drop the cost of their mobile internet services. here is an excerpt from a publication, CyberSchuulNews, that addresses a critical part of the issue.

Someone had mailed in the following:

CyberschuulNews,

Please can you discuss this.

I have always wondered why we pay so much for internet access in this part of the world, and I don’t seem to get full reasons other than cost of maintenance. In your own opinion, why do you think bandwidth is very expensive in Africa, in contrast with developed economies where internet access is free?

Kenneth

CyberSchuulNews is an e-publication produced by long-standing professionals in the Nigerian telecommunications industry, The Executive CyberSchuul. Here is the answer given from an informed perspective:

The free aspect of it we do not know about but we can talk of the affordable.

What we know is that when governments appreciate the need for bandwidth they make critical investments at backbone level thus ultimately making the cost down the line to their people very low and sometimes presented as if it is free. Nothing is free, somebody pays the bill and the cost of bandwidth as a resource is the same all over the world.

If your workers and interns enter your office and they use internet free for one year, chances are that they go about saying internet is free and should be free. They say that because you recognize it should be so and you pay the bills without them knowing. That is how business runs.

Good governments also run in similar manner.

In developing economies, governments generally do not recognise the need for bandwidth the way they appreciate the need for rice and potatoes. It is the duty of active professionals everywhere to bring education and pressure to bear on their governments so that the leaders would understand the need and make the critical investments at appropriate points and levels. But don’t forget that in those countries too the forces of corruption, and hunger, are also a worrying problem for everybody even among the professional class. Even those of our Pro’s in government do not attend very well to the problem, how much less hard core politicians.

Did you know all the dirty games our colleagues plaid in the early days of internet in Nigeria. Did you see what NITEL during the ‘goggled-man’s’ tenure did to stall access of all humanity to the resource? You might not see it because you were not within the firing range.

So Ken, it is how government subsidises critical resources at high end that makes it seem free or otherwise to the user.

On top of all that, add all the other normal problems: energy, corruption and human capacity etc and you begin to see the enormity of the issues involved.

When President Obama put $7.4bilion into Broadband Access, that was what he was doing — stimulating the industry. He was not establishing telecom companies with the money but supporting existing and emerging ones to do business cheap. Ultimately it gets down to the end user for pittance.

In other climes, the President would use the money to establish government companies and set up a race for everybody. At days end, the problem persists.

It is easy for some governments to appreciate the need to subsidise the pilgrimage of people to Jerusalem and Mecca than to see that of broadband internet access. That is the plain truth.

Source: CyberSchuulNews

My Opinion

We can harass the operators all we like, but until our government sits up to its responsibilities, we are not likely to enjoy rock-bottom affordable, not to mention, free internet services in Nigeria for a long time.

Truth be told, these operators are already squeezing water out of stone, in that they are making things work in a country where nothing (in terms of infrastructure) works.

Contributions please.

This is a rant, and it was triggered off by a comment posted at All About Symbian by someone who calls himself Natureboyzone. Here is what he posted:

Hi.i am new to the forum.i use N76 and my network is mtn nigeria.how do i activate it for free browsing.i also heard about the data call pls send me the settings or link me up with someone who can help.thanks

If you follow the AAS link I provided above, you would see that the topic under discussion has nothing to do with configuration settings, muchless free browsing. Note also that he is new to a community, and the first thing he does is this.

I see this embarassing, beggarly attitude on different forums, including foreign ones like Esato and My-Symbian (My-Symbian has a number of Nigerian IP addresses blocked already).

Here on the homefront, Nairaland is has the worst hit mobile community. Over 95% of the exchanges there are about free browsing on GSM networks. It is almost impossible to find an intelligent discussion to engage in the mobile forum there.

Here on MobilityNigeria, we keep stressing that we have no such information to give, but these desperate young men (and women) keep mailing in to request for free browsing tricks and information. As a responsible business and as responsible individuals, we cannot promote practices that undermine the business of others. But that is beyond the point of this article.

What I am bothered about is the nuisance that these free browsing beggars have become everywhere on the WWW, and the bad publicity that they generate for Nigeria. It is bad!

People are having an intelligent discussion, and then someone barges in, begging for free browsing tricks. Sigh. I can imagine that various well-known mobile figures around the world would have received private mails from Nigerian hounds looking for free (illegal) browsing hacks and tricks.

What is more shocking is the fact that the majority of those who jump on the free ride don’t put it to productive uses (See my article published in November 2008: The Free Browsing Tricks on Mobile Networks).

Get productive, guys. Put innovation to work. Get off your butts and do something to better your lot and that of the country you live in. Stop begging and hitch-hiking. Okay, its fine to hitch-hike the first few legs of your journey if things are really bad for you. But build from there, and get off that road ASAP.

I remember using CSD (circuit switched data) years back when call and data both cost N50.00 per minute (anyone remember those days?) to manage my emails, customer orders and support in the early days of my webhosting business. Even at that exhorbitant cost, I put it to profitable use and built something out of it. Circuit Switched Data is the technical name for GSM dial-up.

Thereafter, GPRS (and later 3G) arrived and was much costlier than what we have on ground today. Yet; I still put it to productive use.

Today, we see an army of young people using cost as an excuse (excuse me?) to defend what is largely a product of irresponsibility. I am under no illusions that this article of mine will produce any change. I’ll bet my entire year’s income that this article will be read, noses raised at me, and the hunt further pursued.

But at least, I have had my say. And hopefully, maybe one – just one – of these free browsing hunters will be awakened through what I have written here, and choose to stand apart, get responsible, and do something really productive with his or her life.

Maybe.

PS: Zain has just concluded a month-long free internet promo, and I am sure we will be hard pressed to find a handful of young people who put the promo to real productive use – not just chatting up babes and posting unintelligent comments on discussion boards and weblogs. Not that Zain’s very epileptic internet access helped matters though, but that’s a subject for another article.