Data remains an expensive luxury in Africa but free internet may not come free

Data remains an expensive luxury in Africa but free internet may not come free: "In South Africa one gigabyte of data on mobile networks – the only means of accessing the internet for most – is R149 (pre-paid). This means that for millions of people in the country data is a luxury.

So when mobile operators start giving some of this valuable commodity for free it warrants attention. From July, the country’s third-largest mobile services provider Cell C started offering some services such as Facebook and Wikipedia for free without paying for the data.

In the telecoms industry this is called zero-rating.

This is not the only example of zero-rating in South Africa. In September, the country’s second largest operator MTN announced a deal for its on-demand internet video service FrontRow. MTN now allows streaming of videos without data charges. This is not insignificant, as an hour-long television programme can use over 300 megabytes of data." 'via Blog this'