ITU publishes the ‘Measuring Digital Development: ICT Price Trends 2019’ report |15 June 2020
Cover Page of “Measuring Digital Development: ICT Price Trends 2019” report
Seychelles stays first in Africa for fixed-broadband prices
Seychelles, 33rd in the world among 184 countries, has once again been ranked firstin Africa for fixed-broadband prices in terms of affordability, with its prices less than 2% of GNI per capita.
This means Seychelles has already achieved the 2025 target of the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development's target for 2025, whereby the entry-level broadband services should be made affordable in developing countries at a level corresponding to less than 2% of monthly GNI per capita.
When it comes to mobile-data plans, Seychelles is ranked in the top 5 in Africa and 101st globally. Seychelles’ mobile data plans are between the 2 and 3% of GNI per capita, with ITU suggesting that Seychelles will reach the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development’s target of 2% of GNI per capita by 2023.
Seychelles is ranked 83rd and 105th in the category for low-consumption of mobile-voice-data and high consumptions of mobile-voice-data respectively.
These data come in the ‘Measuring Digital Development: ICT Price Trends 2019’ report of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) published on May 19, 2020.
The ITU’s ‘Measuring Digital Development: ICT Price Trends 2019’ report is one of the two yearly reports published by ITU in its new ‘Measuring Digital Development’ series of statistical and analytical publications. The publication is now replacing what used to be ITU’s annual ‘Measuring the Information Society’ report.
With ITU being the official source for global Information Communications Technology (ICT) statistics, the report provides analysts, telecom operators, policy-makers and economists with a range of data prices for mobile-voice, mobile data and fixed broadband services that have been analysed and compared.
The report also provides details with regards to a country's progress in achieving the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development's target for 2025. This is whereby the entry-level broadband services should be made affordable in developing countries at a level corresponding to less than 2 per cent of monthly GNI per capita.
Summary of the report
The following are reported to be the key outcomes of the report:
- The price of entry-level fixed-broadband subscription went down from 2008 to 2019. Despite the fact that data allowance were not directly equivalent, it generally cost more on average than mobile-data packages;
- The entry-level mobile-voice plans remains affordable in the majority of countries;
- Bundling is impacting prices. The global average prices of data-and-voice basket is cheaper than the sum of data and voice basket separately;
- The average price of mobile-data plans offering 1.5GB have decreased globally from 8.4% of Gross National Income (GNI) per capita in 2013 to 3.2% in 2019; and
- There is great progress by the different countries to meet the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development’s target.
The full report can be accessed at the following link:
Contributed by the Communications Division of the Department of Information Communications Technology (DICT)