South Africans have taken to social media over the last week to demand lower prices for mobile data in what has come to be called the #DataMustFall campaign.

Outspoken radio personality Thabo Molefe (a.k.a TBo Touch) is spearheading this movement, calling data in SA “a complete rip off,” and has challenged the networks to respond to this petition within 30 days.

Your voice will regulate prices and change policies join us #DataMustFall we are presenting to Parliament 2morrow https://t.co/fhcY96i4rC

— Tbo Touch (@iamtbotouch) September 19, 2016

According to the UN’s Broadband Commission – 500MB of data should cost no more than 5% of a person’s monthly income.

However, in countries with as much income inequality as we have it is difficult to determine how much of monthly salary goes to mobile data.

At first glance SA seems to meet this target – at least according to the Measuring the Information Society Report, ITU (2015), which indicates that 500MBs of data is priced at around 1.48% of monthly income.

What skews this picture is that up to 60% of South Africans earn significantly less than the official average monthly income.

What this means is that mobile data actually costs the majority of South Africans anywhere between 6-19% of their salaries.

The challenge facing developing countries such as SA is that the internet is playing an ever more important role in education, governance, culture, business and a host of other areas – meaning cheaper, more reliable internet is absolutely vital for the continued development of our society.

In 2014 the inventor of the internet Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote: “The web is now a public resource on which people, businesses, communities and governments depend. It is vital to democracy and now more critical to free expression than any other medium.”

500MB of data in South Africa currently costs R39 on MTN, CellC and Telkom – and R45 on Vodacom.

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