Internet Alliance Proposes Affordability Target For 1GB Broadband

The Alliance For Afford
able Internet (A4AI) on Tuesday proposed a new affordability target of 1Gigabyte of mobile broadband at two per cent of average monthly income.
This is contained in the A4AI’s 2015-2016 Affordability Report, made available to newsmen in Lagos.
It said that when a basic broadband package was priced at such a level, access would become affordable for all levels of income earners.
The report said that an analysis had shown that the current target of entry-level 500megabytes broadband, priced at 5 per cent or less of Gross National Income (GNI) was woefully inadequate.
It said that driving prices down to two per cent average level would enable large swathes of the population currently priced out of access to get online.
According to the report, increasing the data allowance to 1GB will allow users to make more meaningful use of the Internet.
It said that it was time to set a more ambitious affordability target.
The report noted that in the countries studied, only once prices drop to two per cent of GNI per capita or below did basic broadband become truly affordable for all income groups.
“As noted earlier, 500MB of data does not allow for meaningful use of the Internet.
“It is time to bring the standard by which we measure our progress on ‘affordability’ more in line with the reality of modern data usage.
“A 500MB mobile broadband plan for use over the course of a month, equivalent to about 16MB of data per day, is limiting.
“We therefore, propose a new definition of ‘affordable Internet’ as a 1GB mobile, prepaid broadband plan, priced at two per cent or less of average monthly income.
“This ‘1 for 2’ target should be adopted as the new threshold for affordability,’’ it said.
The report said that as the data requirements of applications continually increased, so too did the need for larger data packages.